By COURTNEY McKINNON
Utah’s mobile home owners are waiting while Utah Rep. Lloyd Frandsen and his supporters fight to remove the “no cause” or 60-day eviction clause from Frandsen’s Mobile Home Tenant Amendments, which went into effect May 5.
Previously unbeknownst to Frandsen, his bill allows mobile home park owners to evict tenants without a cause. Prior to this measure, mobile home park owners were required to state a reason for eviction, said Russell Cline, an attorney representing evicted mobile home owners.
Frandsen was unavailable for comment but earlier told the Associated Press, “I thought I was doing a good thing. This law was designed to help tenants, but the owners are obviously using the law as an excuse to evict.”
Frandsen began to take action as soon as he discovered the ramifications of his bill. He conducted a meeting Wednesday that all affected parties were invited to attend.
Although not all parties were present at the meeting, everyone who attended agreed they did not want the clause in the bill. The park owners do not want the bad press, the mobile home owners don’t want to be unfairly treated, and Frandsen did not intend for this provision to be abused, said Whitney Rearick, housing advocate with the Utah Issues organization.
Brad Jones, counsel for some mobile park owners, was not present at the meeting because he did not know about it until it was too late.
“I am very disappointed I could not attend because I never would have agreed to removing the 60-day eviction from this bill,” Jones said.
The “no cause” eviction is the only way to get rid of tenants who continue to be a problem, Jones said.
Since there are no open mobile park spaces on the Wasatch Front, Jones feels the courts are reluctant to evict people even if they are in violation, simply because they have no place to go.
Troy Walker, another attorney for several mobile home park owners, attended the meeting and agreed that the “no cause” eviction clause has the potential to be abused.
“If a manager did not like a tenant, they could legally evict them under this clause; that was not the aim of this amendment,” Walker said.
Rearick said Utah Issues feels it was misled. They lobbied for the bill unaware of the potential “no cause” eviction clause.
“We thought this amendment would keep people in their homes. We were paying attention to positive provisions in the bill, and this was slipped in,” Rearick said.
Utah Issues is now actively participating in the effort to retract this part of the bill. Since the group aided in passing it, it feels obligated to stay involved until the situation is rectified, Rearick said.
Brown was partially responsible for drafting the amendment, and he said all parties were made aware of the provisions of the bill.
“Everyone was involved in the drafting process, including the sponsor and the president of the (mobile home) tenant association,” Brown said.
After the participants in the meeting agreed they wanted the clause taken out, Frandsen spoke with the governor’s legal counsel. His aim was to have this issued “piggybacked” through a special legislative session to delete the clause, Rearick said.
Vicki Varela, spokesperson for Gov. Mike Leavitt, said there is not unanimous agreement on the issue, and until that time, the governor’s office is in a holding pattern.
Rearick said they will work on getting the special session before next year, but if the issue must wait until then, the current cases will stay in the courts.
“If the cases are in the courts, then the tenants cannot be evicted,” Rearick said.
