Table Mound mobile home park is in Dubuque. (Photo via Google Earth)
Terrible road infrastructure, water leaks, overcharging for water leaks and consistent rent hikes are why tenants of two Dubuque mobile home parks are encouraging the city to follow through on its plan to buy out of the parks, according to city officials.
The city is seeking a $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). City officials say they hope to purchase the Terrance Heights and Table Mound mobile parks and establish a “Community Land Trust.”
As part of that trust, tenants would own and run the park through a non-profit board similar to a co-op or homeowners association, Dubuque Council Member Danny Sprank said. Tenants could join the board to set rent prices and decide how revenue would be used to maintain the park.
Sprank said the “horrible” treatment of tenants in these parks is what motivated the city to move forward with this decision.
“Many neighborhoods are being squeezed,” Sprank said. “It’s not right.”
City officials announced their plans for the $50 million HUD grant in a May 23 special session presentation.
Officials in the presentation estimated a cost of $34.5 million to buy the land, $4.5 million to repair mobile homes, $500,000 to build storm shelters, $2 million for running the trust, and $7 million for other improvements in the parks’ water, sewer and road infrastructure.
“Table Mound and Terrace Heights mobile home parks are grappling with aging infrastructure, lack of proper maintenance and the rising lot rent rates which have more than doubled since 2018 and could potentially displace long-term residents,” the city wrote in its grant application.
In their presentation, city officials said they expect to know the results of the application by late 2024. If awarded the grant, 2025-26 would largely be spent establishing the Community Land Trust. After that, the focus would be on replacing dilapidated mobile homes, creating storm shelters and improving infrastructure which could take until 2030.
If Dubuque is not awarded the grant, the backup plan would be to find a non-profit like the Minnesota-based ROC USA that would help the tenants purchase the mobile home park, Sprank said.
Terrance Heights and Table Mound did not respond to calls for comment for this story.
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Mobile homes outside the parks
Efforts to protect mobile homeowners have been underway at the city and state levels for years.
In the Iowa Legislature, Rep. Brian Lohse, R-Bondurant, has pushed his Republican colleagues to increase mobile homeowner protections though he said it has largely been “unsuccessful.”
The biggest mobile homeowner protections came from a 2022 law that increased the eviction and rent notification requirement from 60 to 90 days and added protections for when parks fail to provide essential services like running water.
“(Mobile home park owners) can raise rent more often than what they really should be able to. And when most of these residents are on fixed incomes, that really becomes a problem,” Lohse said.
Dubuque Council Member Ric Jones, who once lived in a mobile home, said mobile homes offer low-income residents an affordable alternative to traditional homeownership at a time when housing is more expensive than ever. For retirees or young people, mobile homes are a great investment but that “dream has been crushed” by rising rent costs.
Mobile homeowners are particularly vulnerable to the types of abuse seen in Terrance Heights and Table Mound because of the difficulty of moving a mobile home, Jones said.
“We’ve got to take care of these people that are suddenly finding their homes unaffordable,” Jones said.
Moving a mobile home is more complicated than just attaching the home to a truck and hitting the road.
Some mobile homes aren’t in the proper condition to be moved, different states have different standards for mobile homes which limits options for moving and an expert may need to be hired to prepare and transport the mobile home for a move, according to mobilehomeliving.org.
Issues at mobile homes go beyond Dubuque
Dubuque isn’t the only Iowa city having issues with mobile home parks.
A Monticello park provided contaminated drinking water for a year, a faulty sewage system in an Iowa City park contaminated a local creek for more than two years and a Muscatine park’s drinking water was the most contaminated with forever chemicals, also known as PFAS, in the state in 2022.
Lohse said only time will tell if Dubuque’s decision leads to positive changes for mobile homeowners. If successful, Dubuque could be used as an example at the Iowa Legislature on how to better protect mobile homeowners.
“It’s a novel approach and hopefully it works out for the best for everyone and maybe hopefully provides a model for either others to do it or for us as a state to look at it,” Lohse said.
Jones said regardless of the grant application’s outcome, the city’s actions are a step in the right direction and a sign that the treatment of mobile homeowners will improve.
“It’s just a really, really sad picture,” Jones said. “We may not be able to do any of this, but this is the first ray of hope we’ve seen in a long time.”
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