The Manufactured Housing Rent Justification Act has been rendered null and void.
In 2013. then Gov. Jack Markell signed the Rent Justification Act that was enacted to finally give over 50,000 tenants in manufactured home communities protection from unscrupulous landowners that have been using predatory pricing practices against defenseless tenants. The new law was to have provided protection to tenants from landowners who believe they have the right to raise rents for basically any reason.
Unfortunately, over the past few years since the law was enacted, various actions or inaction by our state's legislative, judicial and executive branches, and by some landowners, have effectively rendered the law useless. While the law enacted was extremely vague and ambiguous, one thing that was clear was that landowners needed to actually justify their rent increases, and that tenants are protected against unreasonable and burdensome rent increases.
In 2016, a judge made a legal error when he ruled based on his interpretation of the law, once capital improvements costs are used to justify a rent increase, they remain in the base rent in perpetuity (forever) even though the cost of that improvement has been paid off. This ruling has provided some landowners with huge unjustified windfall profits clearly contrary to the intent of the law. In addition, landowners have been allowed to impose rent increases in excess of 14 percent per year in multiple years, again clearly against the intent of the law.
While some landowners have been in clear violation of the law, the Legislature has taken over two years to provide a simple retroactive modification to the law that will stop landowners from collecting capital improvements in perpetuity, inflicting large unjustified rent increases and receiving millions of dollars of unjustified windfall profits. Even the attorney general has decided not to intercede for tenants, by doing nothing to correct an ambiguous law that is being used by some unscrupulous landowners to literally steal money from unprotected tenants.
Why pass a law if you are not going to enforce it?
Robert Weymouth
Rehoboth Beach
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