'It makes me cry': Kitsap mobile home park tenants face significant rent increases

BREMERTON — When Joann Wellman pulled a notice from her front door stating that the mobile home park she lives in was under new ownership, she was excited. Hurst & Son LLC, a real estate investment and property management company with a headquarters in Port Orchard, became the owners of Pinewood Mobile Park over the summer, and Wellman thought it was a great time for a change.

It was when Wellman read a second note posted on her door handle, months later, that she had a mental breakdown.

Wellman paid $295 a month to rent a space at the park when she moved in 20 years ago. The price increased about $15 every year. Under the park's last owner, a company called DSR Enterprises, the annual increases had recently settled at $615 a month.

The notice on her front door said the rent starting in June 2024 would be $850.

Wellman became so upset upon reading the note that she fell to the ground, and broke her back. After a neighbor came to help, Wellman was taken to the hospital. Her son said she was confused upon reentering her home, still out-of-sorts from the experience, and didn’t think she lived in the park anymore. She has made three visits to the hospital since but can’t remember any of them.

Pinewood Park, a 28-lot mobile home park tucked off Pine Road between Highway 303 and Tracyton, is one of Hurst & Son’s most recent purchases, at $1.5 million, adding to their decoration of nearly 80 mobile park communities across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and North Dakota.

Pinewood Park residents aren’t the first to see significant rent increases under new ownership from Hurst & Son. After their parks were bought in 2021, it was reported that mobile home residents in Aberdeen and Yakima saw a 55% rent increase, among other expenses like additional fees per month for utilities and a water usage cap. Similar stories also played out in parks in Spokane, Bellingham and Moscow, Idaho.

In part due to a hot housing market and rising prices nearly everywhere, mobile home parks have been increasingly bought up by investors, often raising rent for the land underneath manufactured homes that have traditionally provided a more cost effective form of home ownership. As rents swells under new investor ownership across Washington state without any rent caps, residents like those at Pinewood Park are falling through the cracks, being priced out with hardly anywhere else to go.

Mobile home park tenants have no capacity for increasing costs

The increased rent at Pinewood Park is more than Wellman can afford. In an interview with the Kitsap Sun she stated she doesn't know where she'll go next summer. She just knew she couldn’t sign the new lease. Wellman is one of several that came to the same conclusion.

Marilyn Warren moved to Pinewood Park from Arizona in 2017 to live in her RV and be closer to her daughter. Warren was also excited when new ownership was announced, until she saw that her rent would increase from $615 to $700 per month in June 2024.

Like Wellman, her rent had already increased $100 in the last year by the former owners. To pay the current rate, Warren has cut as many costs as she can stomach. She switched her phone plan from T-Mobile to Safelink, signed up for EBT to pay for food and has even had to ask her daughter for $100 occasionally to get through the month.

“I’m just bled to death, right on the edge of nothingness,” Warren said. With rent increasing $95 per month more next year, she said she has no capacity to pay.

“If rent is (supposed to be) a third of your income, I would need $2,100. I have no way to get that…" Warren said. "I have $1,623 a month.”

Warren is living on Social Security and can’t cut anymore expenses, so she has decided not to sign onto next year’s lease. She worries about her neighbors who are also on fixed income, especially those in motor homes for whom rent has increased even more than hers.

“It makes me cry,” Warren said. “I'm scared to death. Every morning I wake up horrified. I have to talk myself out of crying. I've been through so much with this stupid park, and it was such a beautiful place.”

A.C. Boyett lives in Illahee Shores Community, a neighborhood off Illahee Road in East Bremerton, where mobile home residents have been living under Hurst & Son ownership since 2020. The company bought the park for $2 million. Since the purchase, Boyett and other residents saw their rents increase quickly to about $800 per month, where they’d previously seen $10 to $15 increases annually.

Boyett’s neighbors “were just planning on staying here, that's what their hope was,” he said. “Some of them were moving in here, having to borrow money to buy the place. And then to pay that $800 a month, they're really digging themselves into a hole.”

Yolanda Cruz just moved to Illahee Shores Community, where she pays $700 per month under Hurst & Son ownership, much like the price Warren would pay in Pinewood Park in 2024. But next year, Cruz’s rent will rise to $825 per month, suggesting a possibility for Pinewood Park’s future.

“Every year they've been raising rent,” Cruz said. “You're supposed to try to buy your place, to be a little more comfortable, to not worry for other things, like if you were renting an apartment.”

The price of 'a piece of dirt'

When Pinewood Park was owned by DSR Enterprises, residents gathered over jigsaw puzzles, television and occasional breakfasts in the clubhouse, Warren said. But when the on-site manager became sick, maintenance began to run behind and community spaces deteriorated. New management didn’t keep up the same standard of service and maintenance, until the clubhouse was gutted and a new security system was installed ahead of the Hurst & Son sale.

When Hurst & Son entered the picture and tacked on new service fees while shifting maintenance responsibilities onto residents, the park was already in poor shape, she said.

In the new lease, which was reviewed by the Kitsap Sun, tenants like Wellman face $65 penalty fees for late rent, returned checks and violating parking rules wherein residents are allowed two parking permits and guest parking for less than 36 hours. Tenants pay for public utilities and garbage removal and are limited to 9,000 gallons of water per month, to which an overage fee of $150 can be charged.

Tenants are also required to maintain permanent structures in the park along with their space, lawn, perimeter and mobile home exterior at their own expense. Beyond the added expense, maintaining a lawn, perimeter and exterior isn’t realistic for the mobile home residents who are almost all senior citizens, Wellman said.

“They bought a piece of dirt — that's all,” Warren said. “The house is sitting on their piece of dirt. They're not providing anything. Zero. How can they do that? … They're going to raise the rent and they're going to make us maintain the park.”

Hurst & Son explained the rent increases and added expenses in a prepared statement for the Kitsap Sun, saying that “to preserve these communities, we must re-invest in them. … To be preserved, the communities must also become sustainable. Rents need to cover the real costs of water, sewer, garbage and recycling pick-up, and property taxes. The expense of necessary capital improvements needs to be collected over time. It’s not really that gray, for many of these communities deferred maintenance is a closure sentence.”

But many of the park residents have tried to guess at Hurst & Son’s motives in order to rationalize the seemingly insurmountable expenses.

“I think he (Hurst & Son) is trying to force us out so he can build in here, like homes or condominiums or something,” Wellman said.

“They’re making their big bucks across three states on the backs of fixed income veterans, senior citizens, families on disability, middle to lower income families,” Warren said. “They're making these people homeless.”

Where will priced-out residents of Hurst & Son properties go next?

About one-third of the residents of Illahee Shores Community moved out after Hurst & Son raised rents and imposed new rules, recalled Boyett. The park also saw high penalty fees, new utility service fees and restrictive parking regulations much like Pinewood Park.

While some residents got good prices for selling their mobile homes, other people found themselves stuck with money tied up in repairs to their mobile homes. High rent prices for Bremerton apartments led others to choose to pay what seemed like the lesser of two evils — $800 per month to stay on the land beneath their own homes.

A resident of Pinewood Park is determined to sell her mobile home, following a similar path. She wished to remain anonymous to avoid possible discrimination from Hurst & Son for the remaining duration of her lease.

The resident saw her rent increase by $235, to $845 per month, under Hurst & Son’s 2024 lease. When she saw the increase, she knew immediately that she had to leave. She’s already looking for apartments and has no plans to notify Hurst & Son of her intent to sell ahead of time.

“It's acceptable in our culture now to love money more than people,” she said.

Wellman doesn’t think anyone would agree to buy her run down mobile home while also agreeing to pay an exorbitant price for the land tenancy, she said. “I have no place to go.”

Warren can drive her home away with ease, a luxury mobile home owners ironically do not have, she said, but she has nowhere to park the vehicle.

Mobile home parks, like Pinewood Park, have policies that only allow more contemporary RVs for new residents. Warren’s RV is vintage down to the license plates, and she hasn’t found a park in Washington or even Arizona that would accept her vehicle.

“The legislature recognizes that they actually have less options than a normal tenant. And that's why they have these specific protections” in the Manufactured/Mobile Home Landlord-Tenant Act (MHLTA), said Sebastian Miller of the Washington State Attorney General’s office. “You can see the progression of more and more parks closing every year and not a ton are opening, so that means there's just a reduction in available places that you can take your mobile home or RV or trailer.”

Warren has browsed apartments, joined a waiting list for another mobile home park and joined two lists for rental assistance with local housing agencies.

“I don't think that's the proper thing that everybody in the park should go dump their lives on the State,” Warren said. “I don't want to be on welfare, I worked my whole life. Most of these people in here worked their whole lives and they got their social security, or their pensions and they're proud that they've done that. … we want to save our park and our homes.”

Legal aid trying to offer some last hope

At the end of October, Warren organized a meeting between Pinewood Park residents and staff attorneys from the Northwest Justice Project, a publicly funded legal aid program working to address housing, income and educational needs with free legal assistance. Two attorneys gave a presentation on tenant rights to residents in the clubhouse who sat on folding chairs among tall cocktail tables where couches used to be.

“When tenants do not know their rights and obligations, they can be vulnerable and risk housing [in]stability,” wrote attorney Samantha Adams in an email. “When tenants are informed, housing stability is a closer reality.”

The Northwest Justice Project attorneys educated tenants about their legal rights and responsibilities and those of their landlord, according to the MHLTA. The attorneys also shared housing resources, like Kitsap Community Resources, and the Bremerton Housing Authority and Housing Kitsap — whose waitlists are currently closed —  along with special populations housing through Kitsap County Division of Aging and Long-Term Care and Kitsap Veterans Assistance, and relocation assistance with the Washington Department of Commerce.

Most notably to residents in attendance though, the attorneys told residents they should pay their rent and comply with their responsibilities so that they would not end up before an eviction judge who would most likely not rule in their favor.

“The meeting was good as far as it got the tenants all together in one place so we could discuss what Hurst & Son is trying to do in our park,” Warren said. But, “most of these lists are closed and wading through all these overloaded agencies is an exercise in frustration and disappointment and not helpful to save our homes and this park. All they're talking about is ‘pay your rent’ and I said ‘that's what we're here for — we can barely pay it now.’”

Warren decided to take matters into her own hands and sent her disputes along to the Attorney General’s office and is encouraging her neighbors to do the same, in hopes an investigation could lead to some kind of help.

“These tenants have just been sitting there scared and afraid to make a peep because they're afraid they're going to get discriminated against,” Warren said. “You have to open your mouth. I say make a noise, as much noise as you can. … Our greatest hope is that the Attorney General's office will be able to shut down Hurst & Son for their lawless nefarious practices.”

“We've received a significant amount of complaints against Hurst & Son from tenants at various parks,” Miller said. “We haven't formally determined every single complaint is founded or not, but … this is an unprecedented volume of complaints.”

Hurst & Son is currently under investigation by the Attorney General’s Manufactured Housing Dispute Resolution Program, Miller said. The investor company is aware and is in discussion with the program about resident complaints.

Hurst & Son and Pinewood Park residents received an email in the beginning of October communicating that the program was beginning a foundation for the investigation process wherein the company was informed that several violations of the MHLTA were identified and what actions they would need to take in order to comply with the law.

In the letter on Oct. 3, Miller told residents that the MHLTA does not impose restrictions on the amount of rent increase if proper notice is given, that Hurst & Son can transfer utility costs to tenants and that the investigation found no evidence of overcharging.

However, the investigation determined that tenants hadn’t been provided with the required “notice of sale” in some instances and that some tenants had modified lease renewal dates without tenant agreement and imposed rent increases on non-lease renewal dates.

Hurst & Son told Miller that the leases are nearly identical across all of their mobile home parks, he said.

The program is pursuing corrective action, or voluntary compliance, with Hurst & Son, Miller said, and can’t take enforcement action until it is determined that no agreement can be reached. Hurst & Son has been responsive and produced certain records that the program identified violations from. The program also determined that Hurst & Son had illegally transferred permanent structure maintenance responsibilities onto tenants and that its $65 penalty fees were “excessive and not clearly justified.”

Miller proposed that Hurst & Son revoke rent increases in cases where they were issued on non-renewal dates and reimburse the overcharged amounts to residents and that they respond by Oct. 17. Miller also proposed that Hurst & Son remove the provision from the lease that required residents to maintain permanent structures and that they reduce the penalty fee to $20 and refund residents the overcharged amounts.

There are many allegations of instances where Hurst & Son has violated the MHLTA, but the program is going to negotiate the most prevalent issues first, Miller said. Then, they will negotiate each separate issue, which will take some time.

So far, Hurst & Son has agreed to readjust renewal dates across their mobile home parks to the last agreed anniversary date. Each rent increase will then be effective on the anniversary date instead. The company told the Attorney General’s office that they are accounting tenant files across all of their mobile home parks to determine renewal dates in order to “account” for any difference in rent.

These corrective actions may not amount to enough price reduction for many tenants to stay, as rental increases are protected by the MHLTA if issued correctly on a renewal anniversary. But, if Hurst & Son gave defective notice of a rent increase, that increase can’t be enforced, said Shidon Aflatooni, an assistant attorney general in the consumer protection division.

Tenants and landlords can file complaints with the Attorney General’s office online and call or submit a physical copy.

Edits: The letter that tenants received regarding an investigation in Hurst & Son was received in October, not November. The story was corrected to state that tenants were not given appropriate notice of sale and saw modified lease renewal dates, not that Hurst & Son had not provided appropriate notice or had modified the lease renewal dates.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Kitsap mobile home park tenants see significant rent increases