Marina owners and floating home owners met on Halloween (Oct 31) in Tigard for what was the last time as the Marina Issues Subcommittee of the Manufactured Housing Coalition.
The group has managed to reach tentative agreement on a number of key issues. It is important to remember that “tentative agreement” simply means that both landlords and tenants are asking for things and are working on a package deal. While we reach tentative agreement on certain major issues throughout the process, until the entire package of issues are agreed upon, there are no firm decision on proposed changes to the current laws.
Here are the items that the group has tentatively come to a concensus on:
- Include marina landlords and residents in the coverage of the Manufactured Communities Resources Center.
- We will need a new name – Likely the Manufactured & Marina Communities Resource Center (MMCRC). Amend ORS 446.543 (and legally the current name is Manufactured Dwelling Park Community Relations Office).
- We will amend ORS 446.525 to add a requirement that marina residents pay the $10 annual special assessment that MH park residents now pay and that supports MCRC.
- We still need to review this with the county tax collectors. We will verify its applicability, but we need to also consider offering the same exception for low value floating homes. See ORS 308.250 (2), cancelling property taxes for low value (about $16k) MHs in the four big counties.
- We will amend ORS 446.515 to .547 to add marinas to the ORS sections on Dispute Resolution for Mobile Home and Manufactured Dwelling Parks. (Note that ORS 90.610 already requires informal dispute resolution for all facility tenancies, which includes marinas – but marina tenants don’t pay for that through MCRC currently.)
- We may also want to add marinas to ORS 446.380 to .392 regarding (Manufactured Dwelling) Site Information Collection and Distribution by MCRC.
- Include marina landlords in the requirement to register annually with MCRC and get four hours of continuing education on L/T and fair housing law every 2 years, amending ORS 90732 to 90.738.
- This includes paying the current annual registration fee, of $25 for small facilities (20 slips or less) and $50 for larger facilities.
- Provide for a future effective date for the registration and education requirements, and get MCRC to agree to be lenient initially with enforcement, as marina landlords learn about this. We are still determining when this will go into effect. Given that there are only about 40 marina landlords who rent slips, tenants do not feel as though it would be that challenging to get 40 landlords informed of the change.
- Include marinas in the current opportunity to purchase statutes, at ORS 90.842 to .850; delete existing ORS 90.805 to .830.
- Give tenants the right to enter into a 1-year storage agreement with the marina when they are evicted, provided the tenant moves out, all payments are current and storage payments (equal to rent) are continued to be paid until the house sells to a new tenant.
- NOTE: Landlords could not conceive of a way in which they would allow a tenant to keep the home in the slip if the eviction was for nonpayment of rent and the tenant cannot afford to get current with payments. In those cases, a tenant will have about 70 days to sell their home themselves or else the landlord will take possession of the floating home and dispose of it or sell it for the tenant. The evicted homeowner will no longer have any control over the sales price. So, note to floating home owners evicted due to nonpayment of rent: find a way to get current and keep making payments because you do not want your landlord to take your home.
- Extended time to repair the float under a floating home. The current laws allow tenants only 60 days to complete required work when a float is in disrepair or else the tenant can be evicted. Since it is impossible to replace a float in 60 days per requirements under ORS 90.632, Landlords have agreed to allow a floating home owner up to 1-year to complete float work when the float is in disrepair but which is not creating an eminent risk or danger to other property.
- Tenants can chose to get a float inspection to prove that their float is not in need of a repair under ORS 90.632, or as a defense in an eviction case if a Landlord insists they must repairs a float.
- If the landlord insists that the tenant repair their float in the absence of any float inspection, then the facilitating attorneys suggested that the landlord would still need to prove to an eviction court that the float was in disrepair.
- While we didn’t get everything tenants asked for, we did get a reasonable amount of time extended to have the float inspected, contact for the work to get done, save up for the expense of the repair (or, give time to sell the home of the tenant cannot afford the work) and then to perform major float work in most cases.
- Although landlords on the Subcommittee understand that moorages on NE Marina Drive have additional seasonal limitations on work, 1 year is as far as Landlords were willing to give, and that is better than the current impossible 60 day law. The Subcommittee facilitators/attorneys said that any tenant on NE Marine Drive who has a signed contract with a float contractor to do the necessary repairs within that time period allowed under a revised ORS 90.632, but then later learns that the Columbia River current conditions prevent the contractor from doing the work within the 1-year allowed could use circumstances-beyond-their-control/Act of God as a possible defense if they were to have an eviction suit filed against them.
- A landlord’s ability to require a resident to move the floating home within the marina temporarily, under certain circumstances.
- Both sides agree that the owner would pay for the move and the return, and would give advance notice.
- The residents wish to have different standards (length of time of the move, and whether reduced rent is required) based on the reason for the move.
- For temporary relocations of up to 1-month (most of the reasons are 1-2 days moves such as dock work, moving a floating home in next door, minor repairs to an adjacent home, etc.) would be allowed and no compensation will be required the landlord.
- For temporary relocations of up to 4-months (primarily for dredging work or major repairs to adjacent areas, etc.) would be allowed and no compensation will be required the landlord. Beyond 4 months, tenants requested compensation for the inconvenience and as an incentive to landlords that tenant homes are retuned to the original location in a timely manner.
- NOTE: The idea here is that for the first reason, it is just a necessary part of living a floating home that occasionally your home may be in the way or at risk of damage when moving homes into and out of adjacent slips…Landlords need to be able to safely move homes in and out of marinas and not risk damaging other homes in the process. For the second reason, tenants are largely willing to compromise and allow temporary relocation for reasons such as dredging, because typically, the alternative is that if the landlord does not dredge, homes will hit bottom. Our tenant group felt that, overall, it was a benefit to them for the landlord to initiate and complete dredging projects (not hitting bottom = homes with more value), and the likelihood of any one home needing to be relocated for the entire 4 months is fairly slim given the largest dredging window is 4 months and homes are typically moved in stages to complete the project. Both groups are still working through the other 2 reasons – more on that below.
NOTE: For issues #2 and #3, the amendments to those statutes would largely consist of replacing “manufactured dwelling park” or “park” with “facility.”
Agreement on the above issues are all very good news for landlords and tenants.
Issues where we have not reached agreement and where we may carve a little bit of time out of the MH Coalition meetings to discuss again and finalize:
- A Landlords want the ability to temporarily relocate a floating home when conditions of low water are projected…Tenants, generally, do not wish to hit bottom, but the problem is that Landlords generally would like to relocate a home for longer periods of time and, as one landlord stated, he would like to temporarily relocate a home for “up to 7 years” before moving a tenant back to their original position if certain circumstances required it. Landlords failed to explain how this is a pressing need and tenants could not agree to allow their homes to be moved for extended periods of time given that property values are tied to the home’s location within the moorage. No decision was reached.
- Landlords want the ability to relocate a floating home when a governmental agency demands it. Given that there are at least three landlords who are out of compliance with how many floating homes they have allowed in their moorage, this is an issue in which tenants wanted more answers from Landlords. No decision was reached.
The next steps are that John VanLandingham will now attempt to draft language based on everything that has been agreed to thus far, but also take a stab at attempting proposed bill language for the 2 items that we did not reach a decision point on. For those 2 remaining pieces, he will take what each side has said and try to draft something both sides can respond to. The goal is for the proposed draft bill language for all of the issues to get to a point where we can review it and respond or fine-tune it at the next MH Coalition meeting in November…or the December meeting.
Lastly, there was one item that Landlords pulled from our discussion last week just before the meeting. And that is the topic of Liveaboards. Liveaboards are not defined under ORS and Landlords perviously sought to create a legal definition to avoid confusion. The day before the meeting, at least one landlord spoke out against the proposed definition that the landlords sought. So, Landlords are going to meet one more time among themselves to reach an agreement about what it is that they actually want to propose to the group. So we should also get an update on that at the next MH Coalition meeting.
Because marina tenants and landlords have reached tentative agreement on most of our floating home issues, we will not be meeting again as the Marina Issues Subcommittee. The Marina Issues Subcommittee is officially disbanded. At this point, the facilitators feel that we have done enough of the advance hard work that we can bring our agreements to the MH Coalition meetings and discuss anything remaining with the larger tenant landlord group which includes marinas and parks. So, when you see notices in the future about the MH Coalition meetings, the MH Coalition is now the only venue to attend for floating home owners who wish to express their views and ideas about floating home legislation.
GREAT work, everyone. And thank you all for participating in protecting your rights. Our tenant group is growing with every meeting, email, and post.
We look forward to seeing new faces in Tigard next month at the MH Coalition meeting – November 20th.