(The Center Square) – The clock is ticking for seniors and veterans on fixed incomes living in manufactured home communities in Pennsylvania.
Legislation intended to protect them has been stalled in the state Senate for months, leaving many struggling to afford basic necessities while keeping pace with rising lot rents – and increasingly worried about losing their homes.
Gov. Josh Shapiro spotlighted the issue in his recent budget address, urging lawmakers to advance pending legislation.
The issue: There are over 2,200 manufactured home communities across Pennsylvania. Residents typically own their homes but not the land beneath them. As private equity firms acquire communities, many have seen steep lot rent increases – some as high as 50% in one year.
While these communities are sometimes called “mobile home parks,” many of the homes are manufactured units set on foundations, making relocation impractical or unaffordable.
House Bill 1250, sponsored by Rep. Liz Hanbidge, D-Blue Bell, passed the House 144-59, with support from 42 Republicans. Sen. Judy Schwank, D-Reading, introduced companion measures: Senate Bills 745 and 746. All were referred to the Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee in June 2025.
The proposals would stabilize annual lot rent increases by tying them to the consumer price index, while allowing additional increases for extraordinary operating expenses or major repairs, through a disclosure process. They also expand consumer protections, including required fee disclosures and longer notification timelines.
Bob Besecker, founder of the Coalition of Manufactured Home Communities of Pennsylvania, told The Center Square he spoke with Shapiro after the address and was told the governor would sign the bill if it reached his desk.
Besecker began organizing in 2022 after his own community faced significant lot rent increases under new ownership.
Pennsylvania’s Act 261 governs the relationship between community owners and homeowners, but it does not restrict rent increases. Recognizing changes were needed – and the committee couldn’t do it alone – he organized the coalition.
Besecker explained that the coalition and its legal team worked with the bills’ prime sponsors to help shape the legislation around four goals: addressing private-equity-driven hikes, avoiding harm to “mom-and-pop” community owners, making the bills workable for lawmakers, and requiring no taxpayer-funded appropriations.
He said the bills are designed to protect mom-and-pop owners operating within the free-market system and noted they are still making a profit even with modest lot-rent increases. He contends both can be supported without price gouging.
The coalition has grown to 122 member communities, stretching from the Delaware River to the Allegheny River, and from Lake Erie to the Mason-Dixon Line. That growth required adding an advisory team, of which Reggie Hockenberry is a member.
Hockenberry told us their research showed that for every $100 increase in lot rent, property values drop by about $10,000. He added that he knows residents who have given up their homes and moved in with family due to the issue.
Rep. Dan Moul, R-Gettysburg, owns a manufactured home community and he calls what private equity firms are doing “disgraceful.”
“These white-shirt bastards sitting in their ivory towers in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and now British Columbia, are screwing senior citizens, and I don’t like it,” he told The Center Square. “I’m the guy that sticks up for the little guy and takes care of my senior citizens,” Moul continued. “I just wish that everybody in the legislature saw it the same way I do.”
Moul said the dynamic differs from apartment renting; if landlords raise the rent too high, tenants can move. Private equity firms are exploiting the fact that you can’t pick up your house and move it, so people are trapped, he said.
Coalition demographic research found that in the typical 55-plus community, male veterans make up 42% of households, and 36% are women – most of whom are widows.
If the bills are not enacted by the end of the calendar year, they would be considered “dead,” and would need to be reintroduced from scratch in the next session.
There are frequent posts on the coalition’s Facebook page by those waiting on the outcome, Besecker said. If the effort fails, “there’s no reason for them to hang around, because they know it’s just going to keep getting worse.”
“Getting legislation passed in PA requires the approval of the House, the Senate, and the Governor. We have the House and Governor but still lack the Senate,” Besecker said. “If the Senate fails to act, the residents lose and private equity firms win. If the Senate votes against our bills, the residents lose and private equity firms win.
What do residents lose? For many, their homes. What do private equity firms win? The ability to continue price gouging manufactured home residents with exorbitant lot rent increases. You know, it isn’t a good look when a legislative body has it within their power to protect their residents and fails to do so. Throughout history it’s the type of thing that has turned many a majority party into a minority party.”
The team has no intention of packing up their tents and going home, said Besecker. “We cannot quit – there are too many people counting on it.”
Sen. Joe Picozzi, R-Philadelphia, Urban Affairs and Housing Committee chair, did not respond to our request for comment in time for publication.
