Buckley tries again for review of mobile home rents

Erin Neff

Tuesday, April 10, 2001 | 10:59 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A bill that would create a state board to review rent increases in mobile home parks seems destined for the same fate similar measures have had in recent years.

Assembly Bill 341, sponsored by Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, would establish a board to review any proposed rent increase of more than 5 percent, or any hike that brings the monthly rental to over $400.

Buckley, who has seven manufactured home parks in her district, said residents tell her horror stories of increasing rents that eat into Social Security checks and make them choose rent over food.

But even if the bill passes the Assembly, which seems likely given strong support from Democrats who comprise the majority of that house, it could easily die again in the Senate.

Similar measures have lost by one vote on the Senate floor and by one vote in the Senate's Commerce and Labor Committee.

"It's not rent control, it's to prevent rent gouging," Buckley said. "Every year when I knock door to door, people in these parks tell me it's their biggest concern."

Karl Braun, president of the Nevada Association of Manufactured Home Owners, said the majority of the state's 470 mobile home parks are run by caring Nevadans who keep rent increases in check.

But 29 of the 42 parks charging more than $400 a month are owned by out-of-state operatives.

In most cases, residents of such parks own their homes but pay a monthly fee to rent the land in the park.

"Every year when the rent goes up, the value of my home goes down," Braun testified Monday before the Assembly Commerce and Labor Committee.

Marolyn Mann, a lobbyist for the Manufactured Home Community Owners, argued that the bill would institute rent control and force modest mobile home park owners to subsidize the "country club lifestyle" in some of the high-end parks.

"Rent increases have not been as exorbitant as some would have you believe," Mann said.

She also said establishing a board to review rent increases would create "a whole new bureaucracy."

The proposed board would have two members appointed by the Manufactured Home Community Owners Association; two from the Nevada Association of Manufactured Home Owners and one from the Nevada Manufactured Housing Association.

Lobbyists representing the real estate industry and apartment complex owners also testified against the bill, expressing concerns that rent review boards could soon "spill over" into their industries.

The committee took no action on the bill Monday.