The beginning of the meeting is always dedicated to new news and reporting in on current events. There were 2 relevant things in the discussion which occurred before the main discussion of the MH Coalition – Park/Marina Purchase by Tenants and City of Portland Legislative Initiatives.
PARK/MARINA PURCHASE BY TENANTS
The meeting began with a discussion about park Tenants purchasing their parks. This is important to us because, if Floating Home Owners get our bill passed during the next legislative session, we will be granted most of the protections and benefits which park Tenants currently enjoy.
The Landlords believe it takes Tenants too long to organize themselves in order to compete to purchase a park. They claim it is faster when a third party just makes an offer.
The obstacles which Tenants face in making an offer faster is that they must organize many residents, determine who is interested in purchasing, who has the money to purchase, find out where they can pull money from, and they need technical assistance…all within a little over a week!
Tenants need 2 additional things in order to make a successful bid at purchasing their parks/marinas.
- Technical Assistance: Tenants must figure out how to form and operate a non-profit or other business entity who will own and manage the park/marina. CASA is an association which can help park residents do this, but park law differs currently from marina law. And, currently, CASA is very busy so they likely will not help marinas at this time. Also, Tenants need to financial expertise to understand if what they are purchasing is a good deal for them.
- Financial Assistance: It takes time to get financials in order for every interested resident in the park/marina. The Housing and Community Services department has a fund to assist park Tenants, but not marina Tenants. This is largely because it was set up to help people who are on low and fixed incomes.
Some major benefits to owning your slip are:
- Your marina can never be sold to another entity or redeveloped for another use = STABILITY, INCREASED PROPERTY VALUE DUE TO DECREASED RISK
- HOA fees are typically lower than rents because you are not contributing to the purchase of the marina owner’s children’s college, vacations, or new sports car = LOWER MONTHLY COSTS, HOA FEES ARE INVESTMENTS IN THE MARINA WHICH TRANSLATE TO IMPROVED INFRASTRUCTURE AND TYPICALLY RESULT IN INCREASED PROPERTY VALUES
- Tenants control increases in rents = POWER IN DETERMINING FUTURE MONTHLY COSTS
- Tenants get voting power to vote on investment in improvements or rule changes = POWER IN SELF-MANAGEMENT
- Tenants cannot be “evicted” except in extreme cases of violence or rowdiness, or blatant non-payment of HOA fees = CONTRIBUTES TO MORE ENJOYMENT FROM YOUR HOUSING ARRANGEMENT
- Tenants can sell their slips separately from their homes = OFFERS GREATER FLEXIBILITY WHEN YOU WANT TO MAKE A HOUSING CHANGE
It nearly always makes sense for marina Tenants to purchase their marinas, unless in some cases where the infrastructure is old and needs a lot of updating, in which case, those expenses will be incurred by the new owners (the previous tenants, as current owners, will now become responsible for paying for the infrastructure upgrades). So poorly-maintained marinas will need to be closely evaluated.
PORTLAND LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES
The City of Portland currently is attempting to change laws around 4 issues related to parks or marinas within the City of Portland boundary.
- They would like to create new zoning which would allow for a MH Park to always be a MH Park, never allowing redevelopment.
- Requiring mandatory park registration with the City of Portland.
- For apartment rentals (and also renters who rent a floating home owner’s home within the City of Portland), further background check regulation is being proposed so that each Tenant must be considered on an individual basis, rather than the a Landlord being able to say that they do not allow anyone who has ever been convicted of a crime.
- They are proposing a cap on security deposits (which are returned at the end of a rental period) and fees. ORS limits the charging of fees by a Landlord to only about 9 different things and, according to the MH Coalition facilitator who are attorneys, ORS prohibits the charging of marina move-in/move-out/transfer fees. But marina Landlords continue to do it. This new proposal for the City of Portland would limit the amounts that can be charged for the acceptable fees.
MH COALITION
TIMELINE – FROM ISSUE TO BILL
The deadline to introduce our topics for legislative consideration is September 28th in order for them to be considered for vote during the next legislative session which begins in January 2019.
Here are the topics the MH Coalition plans on introducing on September 28th:
- Addressing the sunset law (a law which goes into effect to test how well the law works, but which has passed with a “sunset” meaning the law will expire unless it is renewed as-is or renewed with proposed changes) on the Capital Gains Tax Exclusion benefit for Park Owners (and hopefully soon, Marina Owners, too!) who sell their parks (future marinas) to their tenants. They get a valuable tax credit. If the owner pays taxes to another state other than Oregon, this benefit does not apply.
- Addressing another sunset when a park closes, its tenants can apply for a $5,000 tax credit from the state. This can offset the costs of moving to another facility (and would be woefully inadequate for floating home owners in this situation).
- Sub metering. Resolving issues that were accidentally crested during the last laws which were enacted.
- Dispute Resolution. The topic of today’s meeting. There are good laws on the books to protect park and marina Tenants, but when Tenants have issues with a landlord, there is no remedy except to litigate, while Landlords can resolve their issues with tenant through evictions.
- MARINA ISSUES!!!!!!! Woo Hooo!
The issues we are working through in the Marina Issues Subcommittee will be introduced and therefore, will qualify for bill drafting over the next several months. So, now is the time to participate as much as you can in every meeting.
DISPUTE RESOLUTION
Most of the issues that erupt between Landlords and Tenants are due to lack of communication. Waiting until you are in a courtroom is too late to begin talking. But what happens when you are a tenant and you want to talk, but you Landlord refuses?
The goal is to get both parties to talk. The MH Coalition is proposing mandatory mediation for Landlords and Tenants when requested by a Tenant. This allows both parties to hear the other side and reduce a possible eviction or legal fees.
After a year of debating this topic, it has become clear that Landlords have an effective legislative tool to get Tenants to do as they wish – evictions. Tenants need a way to require a Landlord to listen to them and act in good faith. Mandatory mediation is a reasonable step to improve relations when a tenant feels hopeless in their living situation because of unresolved issues with their Landlord.
There are certain issues which are not good candidates for being resolved through mediation – perhaps the issue is too large. Maybe the Landlord asked a Tenant to remove something on their rented space which the Tenant felt they had every right to have on their rented space, and then the Landlord removed and destroyed the Tenant’s property after the Tenant refused to remove it. This is an example of an issue which may be too large to be worked out through mediation. During the intake process, this may be an issue flagged for litigation.
The intake process requires several steps and oftentimes, the issues can be resolved with just a little education about ORS during intake.
And sometimes, the issues go to mediation. Mediation does not guarantee your Landlord will agree with you.
The MCRC pays the cost of mediation – it is free for the Tenant to use. It usually costs the MCRC around $300-360 per dispute.
The MH Coalition agreed that there should be some teeth in performing on the agreement which arises from the mediation session. For example, if an issue goes to court, the agreement from the trial can be converted to a court order. If one party does not comply with the agreement, then an Affidavit of Noncompliance can be filed in the court and then it becomes a court order to enforce the original Agreement so that you do not have to go back and repeat the trial.
We wonder what kind of legislative teeth was can add to this sort of a mediation resolution.
MEETING CONCLUSION
The focus of the next few monthly meetings will be to finalize key decisions on Marina Issues/Submetering/Dispute Reolsution, draft bill language acceptable to both Landlords and Tenants, react to drafted language that will become the bill, as well as ensuring that the language doesn’t create new issues for either party or for a stakeholder group not represented by the MH Coalition.
The next MH Coalition Meeting is on September 19th in Salem, 9am-12pm. See ya!!