Matt Chapman serves on the board of Manufactured Housing Action and has been fighting for fair housing laws in Iowa for five years.

By copying the laws that govern manufactured housing parks, some Iowa legislators are trying to make illegal lease provisions legal for all Iowa rentals.

To get a good understanding of what is happening, we will start with some laws Iowa has already enacted, which are harmful for homeowners in Iowa’s manufactured housing parks. They have been inundated with private equity and vulture capitalists who want to extract as much wealth as possible and then move on.

The same trends are affecting single and multi-family rental housing, which is a much bigger sector in Iowa. This is why passing bills like Senate File 412 (or the similar House File 973) would make staying housed much harder and would cause more Iowans to suffer.

The private equity firm Havenpark Capital purchased the Dallas County park where I live in April of 2019. They came into our community and immediately told us they could sell our park to a big box store, but instead they were going to raise our rent by 66 percent. The land our park sits on is part of our city’s affordable housing plan, so the big box store threat wasn’t true.

Havenpark also added new fees we never had before, along with a schedule of fines. Finding any avenue where they could extract wealth from tenants seemed to be the master plan. These are some of Iowa’s most vulnerable constituents.

HOW IOWA CODE IS SKEWED TO MANUFACTURED HOUSING PARK OWNERS

Here are a few salient facts.

1. Iowa has about 550 manufactured housing parks and some 50,000 mobile homes.
2. Out-of-state entities own at least 50 percent of those parks.
3. Out-of-state entities typically purchase large parks, which means they own far more than half of Iowa’s manufactured housing lots.

After one year, our lease goes month-to-month. The owner’s ability to refuse payment and evict anyone without cause through lease termination is a threat we all feel in these communities.

In the past, landlords said they must be able to terminate leases at any time. The example stated was that one resident was shooting fireworks at another home. Under current Iowa law on manufactured housing communities, anyone who is a clear and present danger can be immediately removed. Don’t buy that excuse.

That’s why we support House File 482, a bill that would prohibit unjustified lease termination. House File 481 would also help by slowing the rent increases. (Democratic State Representatives Kenan Judge and Lindsay James introduced both bills. House File 482 was not even referred to a subcommittee. House File 481 got through a subcommittee but was not taken up in the full House Judiciary Committee before the “funnel” deadline.)

A no-fault lease termination happened in my community. A manager didn’t care for a tenant and refused her rent. That led to her being evicted and losing her home. She sold it for about $22,000, which was $40,000 less than she had paid two years earlier from the same park that evicted her. Totally legal! Time was running out and she didn’t want the folks who kicked her out to get her home. She had bought the home with settlement money she received after a work accident left her disabled. This experience has caused great hardship for her and sent a chilling message to the other community members.

You can find her story and others in a report titled “Displacement Incorporated” written by my friends at Manufactured Housing Action.

Lease terminations also allows the park owner to neglect infrastructure. If you complain, you may be the next one to get evicted.

One example is the picture of the American flag at the top of this post. Veterans and their widows live in my community and had to drive by that flag every day as it disintegrated over a two-year period. Abandoned homes have sat for years, with no street lighting or snow removal. They even took away our spring cleanup.

If Iowa law continues to allow month-to-month leases and termination of lease at any time, folks will feel no security. Legislators need to address this problem.

MAKING ILLEGAL LEASE PROVISIONS LEGAL

In 2022, Republican lawmakers approved and Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 2652, which allowed landlords to put illegal provisions in a lease.

Think about that. Think of how you can intimidate residents (the average layperson who owns their manufactured home) to adhere to ridiculous demands. Think of that intimidation coupled with the two lease provisions, month-to-month leases and no-fault lease terminations mentioned above. Let me share that language from Iowa Code Chapter 562B.11, subsection 3, related to illegal lease provisions:

A provision prohibited by this section included in a rental agreement is unenforceable. If a landlord or tenant knowingly uses a rental agreement containing provisions known to be prohibited by this chapter, the other party may recover actual damages sustained.

Even that clause is threatening. If a landlord or tenant “knowingly uses”? Tenants can make suggestions, but the landlord controls the terms of the lease.

In Iowa, you must know the law to get a driver’s license. But not so to get a license to run a manufactured housing park. This clause is telling landlords not to even look at the Iowa Code so that they have plausible deniability. They put “knowingly” and “known” right in the code—twice! It’s a loophole designed to rip off Iowans.

Now Republicans want to apply that principle to every rental in the state. It’s in a bill eligible for debate on the Senate floor labeled Senate File 412, formerly Senate Study Bill 1047.  A companion bill is eligible for floor debate in the lower chamber: House File 973, formerly House Study Bill 234.

Other provisions in Senate File 412 would be horrible for Iowans as well. For instance, the bill would reduce the time to cure a notice to quit or eviction by making weekends and federal holidays count as business days. There is also a peaceable possession clause, which I am reaching out to get some clarity on. It smells pretty bad. Senate File 412 would put these clauses from the code chapter on manufactured housing and mobile homes into Iowa Code Chapter 562A, which covers all rentals in the state.

The lobbyist declarations for the bill are revealing. Several property management companies or groups representing landlords support the bill. The Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Iowa Manufactured Home Residents Network, and ACLU of Iowa are all registered against it.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

Why do the park owners and landlords’ political action committees have so much power to bend the legislature to their will? Why don’t lawmakers stand up for their constituents? When you look at the absurdity of allowing illegal clauses in leases it seems like the PACs are just trying to justify their existence since we are already so painted into a corner.

Ending on a good note: after more than five years of ownership by an out-of-state company whose management style treated the residents as enemies, my park was recently purchased by private owners, originally from Iowa. The new owner, Property Management, wants to work with residents, not just extract wealth from us.

We asked for two things in the lease: one-year renewable leases, and lease terminations only for good cause.

The response was, “Why wouldn’t I want that? I know that rent is coming in, and I like that security too.”

As long as we are owned by Property Management, we are partners together who have mutual respect.

We need guardrails now to stop other companies that would come to our state and disrespect renting Iowans. Do we want investment in Iowa? Yes. Do we want to allow those investments to abuse Iowans? You would think not, but the Iowa Code says the opposite.

Don’t listen to what politicians say as much as what they do. Pay attention to the results of the laws they voted for. That is where reality lies.