Forming a Tenants Association
By Bill Bateman
I’m the new guy when it comes to manufactured home living. there have been a lot of things
I have had to pick up as I go along. Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing some of those
experiences in the hope to help you achieve a soft landing. I will include a short overview in
this section, and then a more detailed audio version in the podcast section.
One of the first things it became clear to me I was going to need was to be part of an
association or homeowners’ group. I had had the good fortune over the past years of being
involved with landlords in my apartments that had been positive. We had become friends
and worked together especially during the times of difficulty to get everything back
together as a group. It was not an Us versus Them situation, Apparently, I was lucky.
Unfortunately, in the manufactured home community I now live that was not the case.
Nationwide people are reporting incidents of bullying and intimidation, and those reports
are on the increase. That is both illegal and unacceptable. The solution? A strong
association.
Looking on the OSTA site I discovered there are three types of tenant organizations here in
Oregon. They are Unaffiliated Tenant Organizations, Tenant Committees affiliated with
a larger organization, and Committees of Seven. They are not exclusive and except for
the Committee of Seven’s, they can be as many tenants as the facility’s wants.
A tenant can be on any committee or multiple committees if they are a resident. Neither
the park owner or representatives of the park managers have a right to participate in
electing these communities attending any meetings without an invitation or have any say
about how they are run.
Let’s take a quick look at the types. The most common is the Committee of Seven. This is a
committee with very limited statutory rights. The tenants elect a committee of seven or
fewer in a facility wide election with one committee per facility to represent the tenants.
The committee has the right to request tenants meeting within 10 to 30 days with a
landlord or representative to discuss the tenants non rent concerns regarding the facility
at least once a year but not more than twice. They can send the summary of issues raised
and the landlord must respond within writing in 60 days (about 2 months). However, there
are no consequences for a landlord that refuses to comply. These groups tend to be the
least effective tenant group as the tenants often believes these groups are limited to just
one activity and the only response if a landlord fails to respond could be mediation.
The second, Committee associated with the larger organization. Currently these groups
are, at least in the state of Oregon, OSTA chapters. These tenant committees are often
called chapters. Generally, organizations set guidelines on how they’re set up, elected and
run. Usually only members of the larger organization are allowed to participate and they
speak for both individuals in the park and then in general in their interactions with the
landlord. They can utilize mediation and, with consent of individuals represented, those
individuals in meetings with the landlord. Sometimes these groups get more attention from
the landlord because they are affiliated with the larger group.
In our park, after a long discussion, we choose to go with an Unaffiliated Tennant
Committee. That’s because these committees have the same rights and capacities as
affiliated committees, but may not have the same resources. All park tenants are usually
allowed to participate, and that’s what we’re doing. Everyone is welcome. These groups
have broader support and participation than affiliated groups because they’re not required
to belong to a second organization. They set their own rules on how they are set up elected
and run. They both speak for individuals in the park and tenants in general in their
interaction with the landlord. These are recognized organizations but don’t have the right to
force the landlord to meet with them. They can utilize mediation and with the consent of an
individual, represent an individual in dealing with the landlord. Interestingly. enough these
groups sometimes get more attention from landlords because they usually represent a
larger portion of the tenants in the park. They are a formal, legitimate, and legally
recognized group.
Social Committees
There is fourth type of committee, but it’s basically a social committee. They organized
things like bingo, yard sales, potlucks, and ice cream socials on the 4th of July. One of the
primary types of tenant organizations will also fulfill this function while Committees of
Seven are least likely to engage in these activities. This is because of the tenants believing
they are limited in what they can do. It is important to consider the Committee of Seven
cannot force a meeting on a rent related issue.
One issue to consider: Changes in the law and how that impacts each group. A
committee of seven requires a vote to access the protection contained in
(90.600 – section 9) –
a tiny little part in the chapter that states that the landlord must meet with the
committee of seven once a year and listen to the issues and provide a written response.
However, there is no real Hammer on a landlord who listens to the committee of seven and
chooses not to do anything. Or chooses not even to meet with the committee of seven. I’ve
seen this happen and it’s heartbreaking for the tenants who’ve spent hours making ballots
and getting the word out and talking up the power of the CO7 to other residents only to
have the LL laugh in their faces. So it’s my opinion that the statute containing the
committee of seven has not a lot of value because there’s nothing behind it to help tenants
when the landlord doesn’t care that there’s a committee of seven.
There’s a lot of risk involved in organizing a tenant group and landlords tend to threaten the
people organizing it. And to not be able to realize any positive change from all of that work
in voting, is enough to kill a young organization.
I do however find a lot of value in organizing a tenant association that is not a committee of
seven – because of the Mandatory Mediation law that we now have access to. This does not
require any sort of voting. You just become a group that meets. In 2019 mandatory
mediation was created and protected by statute. Prior to this new law, the committee of
seven was all tenants had.
However, with mandatory mediation, this law also requires a landlord to meet with a
tenant whenever they need, whenever an issue arises, as often as they need (much more
than 1 time per year which is the CO7 statute limit) if the tenant isn’t abusing it. So
Mandatory Mediation is better in terms of frequency.
The mandatory mediation also protects tenant associations or groups of tenants that have
not gone under some sort of official vote. Mandatory mediation also comes with a
hammer, which, if the landlord does not meet with the tenants or the tenants’ group, then,
the tenants are entitled to rent. So mandatory mediation is better than C07 because of the
legislative hammer and rent penalty.
The CO7 statute was great, but is now outdated now that we have Mandatory Mediation
which is much more powerful.
With that said, I now believe it makes more sense and benefits the tenants more to
exercise their rights under mandatory mediation, individually or as a group, than it does to
exercise their rights under the committee of seven law. If it makes people feel better to
organize and have a vote, then great, but it’s a lot of work for tenants to do to organize
under that law when there is no Hammer. I think it’s better to organize as a general resident
association and use the new law of mandatory mediation to get your issues heard with the
landlord. There are other reasons I believe that just organizing a tenant association instead
of a committee of seven is better and some of those are about the fact that it is hard to
maintain a committee of seven when one person leaves and then you have to revote and all
those kinds of maintenance issues whereas if you just have a group that meets regularly,
you don’t need so much hierarchy and voting and, administrative duties and burdens on
the people who are sticking around to do the hard work.
Using that information, we just formed an Unaffiliated Tenant Committee on the 18th of
this month. We are now working on providing the information needed to give your landlord
to share with new residents when they purchase. That is being added to the website and I’ll
be talking more about that in my next article. Check out the podcast for more on this topic.
