After the Flint water crisis, Michigan became a national leader on safe drinking water, requiring the removal of lead pipes and the reduction of harmful “forever chemicals” years before the federal government acted.

But the state has a blind spot when it comes to the hundreds of thousands of people who live in its mobile home parks.

Regulators say they have little power to enforce the rules in the state’s estimated 100 or more unlicensed parks when owners fail to provide safe water. The problem is compounded by private equity firms that have been buying up parks over the past two decades and now control about 1 in every 6 parks in Michigan — among the highest rates in the country, according to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a group that advocates against such purchases.

Officials say it can be a struggle to even contact those park owners, let alone get them to comply with regulations.

“With private equity moving into this space, the goal these companies seem to have is to return the absolute highest return they can to investors even if that means providing inadequate service or engaging in exploitative practices, or unsafe practices for the residents,” said state Sen. John Cherry, a Democrat who sponsored legislation to strengthen enforcement in the communities.

But the state doesn’t attempt to track unlicensed parks. And an industry spokesperson said Michigan officials — particularly law enforcement — have the power to do more if they choose.

Rare pursuit of an unlicensed mobile home park

At North Morris Estates where Theo Gantos lives outside Flint, conditions got so bad that the state refused to renew the park’s license to operate.

Water often flowed weakly from the tap because the wells that service the park didn’t produce enough, Gantos said. Sometimes the water was discolored. It could stain laundry and destroy appliances. He installed a multistage filter system just to be able to use it.

Eventually, local law enforcement investigated. In March, the owner pleaded guilty to a criminal charge for operating without a license, agreeing to pay a fine and sell the park.

That might not have happened if Gantos had not been so pugnacious. He spent years battling Homes of America, an affiliate of private equity group Alden Global Capital that local prosecutors said owns North Morris. That included filing a public records request for emails on officials’ handling of problems at his park, pushing regulators to enforce rules and speaking out to media over what he calls blight conditions.

“These guys, they don’t care,” Gantos said about complying with the rules.

Representatives of North Morris and Homes of America, including an attorney who appeared for the park in legal proceedings, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, called LARA, has the authority to inspect and investigate complaints at licensed mobile home parks. But it’s typically fallen to law enforcement to pursue criminal charges against unlicensed parks.

The North Morris conviction for operating without a license is likely the first such under the state’s mobile home law that has been on the books since 1987, the county prosecutor said.

John Lindley, president and CEO of the industry group Michigan Manufactured Housing Association, said the rarity of such cases is evidence that state and local law enforcement are choosing not to enforce the rules.

“This whole notion that, ‘There’s nothing we can do about this.’ Clearly there is, or that prosecution wouldn’t have taken place,” Lindley said. “Not having the authority to go after communities that don’t have a license is completely different from choosing not to go after those. And what we’ve seen so far with both the state and local units of government is they’ve elected not to.”

Shutting down a park is a bad option

Mobile home parks without a license are “essentially operating unregulated,” Cherry said. One of the state’s few options is to shut down a park, a rarely used last resort that can mean throwing people out of their homes.

Mobile home parks have long been an important affordable housing option. But that affordability is fading.

A study by Lending Tree, a lending marketplace, found new mobile home sale prices rose more than 50% nationally from 2018 to 2023 — new single-family home price averages, by contrast, rose 38% over that period.

Last year, LARA supported legislation that would have given the department more power to penalize unlicensed parks, force parks to provide owner contact information and limit rent increases. That failed.

This year, Democratic Sen. Jeff Irwin has proposed a narrower law that would give state drinking water officials more power to make sure water in all mobile home parks is drinkable. Right now, they only have direct authority over parks that provide their own water. But it’s common for parks to take city water from a pipe connecting to the nearby town.

That water is usually safe when it reaches the park, but if the park’s water pipes crack or fail, water protections won’t apply on the private property. That keeps officials from stepping in and forcing change except in limited situations when there’s a public health threat. It can leave residents unsure where to turn when the owner refuses to fix problems.

“We take those issues very seriously,” said Eric Oswald, director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy’s drinking water and environmental health division. He said they try to work with licensing officials to ensure water is safe, though “the problem is, I’m not resourced for that.”

The Michigan Manufactured Housing Association opposed last year’s legislation, arguing it would make mobile homes less affordable. The group says it supports extending water protections to within parks, as called for in this year’s legislation. It passed the state Senate in late June and is now in the GOP-controlled House.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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