Share: 

Why pass a law if it isn’t enforced?

March 16, 2018

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

 

 

  • A letter to the editor expresses a reader's opinion and, as such, is not reflective of the editorial opinions of this newspaper.

    To submit a letter to the editor for publishing, send an email to viewpoints@capegazette.com. All letters are considered at the discretion of the newsroom and published as space allows. Due to the large volume of submissions, we cannot acknowledge receipt of each submission. Letters must include a phone number and address for verification. Keep letters to 400 words or fewer. We reserve the right to edit for content or length. Letters should be responsive to issues addressed in the Cape Gazette rather than content from other publications or media. Letters should focus on local issues, not national topics or personalities. Only one letter per author will be published every 30 days regarding a particular topic. Authors may submit a second letter within that time period if it pertains to a different issue. Letters may not be critical of personalities or specific businesses. Criticism of public figures is permissible. Endorsement letters for political candidates are no longer accepted. Letters must be the author’s original work, and may not be generated by artificial intelligence tools. Templates, form letters and letters containing language similar to other submissions will not be published.