Royal mobile home park will repay tenants for illegal utility charges

MOSES LAKE — A mobile home park in Royal City allegedly double-charged its tenants for utilities for more than a year and will repay tenants a total of $53,000 as a part of a settlement reached in a resulting class action lawsuit.

According to a statement from Columbia Legal Services (CLS), the settlement proposal has been preliminarily approved in Grant County Superior Court. Ty Duhamel, the lead attorney from CLS representing the tenants, said another hearing in three months will provide tenants not involved in the lawsuit to voice their opinions on the resolution.

In accordance with the agreed upon settlement, the Royal Coachman Mobile Home Park will pay $53,000 to tenants — a full refund of all of the duplicate utility fees the park illegally charged starting in fall 2014. The tenants still living in the park will also receive rent security for three and a half years, as the park will limit rent increases to about 4 percent annually while prohibiting new fees and charges until January 2020.

The settlement also states that the Royal Coachman Mobile Home Park must remain open for at least five years, use a “plain language” rental agreement in Spanish and English that homeowners can understand, and make best efforts in the future to hire a bilingual manager.

Tenants brought the lawsuit against the park in 2015 to stop the park from double-billing for utilities. Duhamel said the park’s rent structure defined a rental amount to be paid by tenants and stated that the park was obligated to pay water, sewer and garbage utility charges each month. The rental agreement also stated tenants were responsible to pay any overage charges for excess water and excess garbage, Duhamel said.

But starting in October 2014, that’s not what was happening, Duhamel said.

“Starting in October of 2014, the park just starting imposing what they called a ‘new utilities fee,’ and there was no new utilities,” he said. “So essentially what was going on was the park was double-billing the tenants for utilities.”

According to the release from Columbia Legal Services, the park began charging tenants for utilities twice each month — first as the amount included in monthly rent payments and again for a “new utilities” fee imposed each month. The park started imposing the “new utilities” fee without written notice in advance, Duhamel said. The release from CLS stated the double-billing began after new management took over the park because “one-year rental agreements did not allow new management to increase rents.”

The “new utilities” fee being charged to tenants was $69 per month. Duhamel said the park charged the fee for 14 months and ceased the practice in December 2015.

Columbia Legal Services represented three tenants of the park in the class action lawsuit, but Duhamel said there are a total of 55 tenants who were affected by the illegal utilities charge between October 2014 and December 2015. Duhamel said another hearing in Grant County Superior Court in three months will give other members of the class (the other 52 affected tenants) the opportunity to voice support or objection on the settlement or ask any questions they may have.

“Normally the procedure protects absent class member due process rights and makes sure that they have a voice in the resolution of the case and their rights are protected,” Duhamel said.

“It’s a good settlement for them … usually in a case like this, I don’t think I’ve ever had many objections.”

Duhamel said the settlement agreement between the two parties was reached after “arm’s length negotiations.” He said both parties arrived agreeably at the resolution.

Unfortunately, this is not a new problem, as Duhamel said situations like this involving unfair or illegal practices by mobile home park landlords are fairly common.

“Unfortunately it is (common),” he said. “Some mobile home park owners follow the law and do a good job, and others just use their superior bargaining position to increase rents in the middle of the rental term or to impose new charges or to charge exorbitant fees. There has been a history of doing that statewide. It’s why we have a Mobile Home Landlord Tenant Act, to prevent those kinds of practices.”

The purpose of that act, Duhamel said, is “to protect mobile home owners by providing stable, long-term tenancies for persons living in mobile home parks.”

“Mobile homes are not recreational vehicles,” Duhamel said, via the CLS statement. “They are designed to be placed permanently on a pad and maintained there for life. This inability to relocate makes mobile home owners easy targets for park owners that don’t follow the rules and compel payment of illegal fees under threat of eviction.”

Duhamel added that the settlement reached between Royal Coachman Mobile Home Park and the class of tenants will hopefully put other park owners on notice statewide that violations of the law will not be tolerated.

Royal Coachman Mobile Home Park representatives were unavailable for comment.

Ryan Minnerly can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.