Letter: Slanted coverage of Dotsero Mobile Park
I own a mobile home park in Summit County and I am writing to express concern about the slant of your article and other media commentary concerning recent mobile home park legislation. You describe the legislation as something which prevents the “exploitation” of tenants through aggressive rules enforcement. In fact, the recent legislation hinders landlords’ ability to enforce rules and this will cause mobile home parks in Colorado to become worse places to live.
The idea that landlords “exploit” tenants through rules enforcement is a myth. Landlords enforce rules only so that the parks can be kept as attractive places to live. These new laws benefit the small percentage of bad-actor residents, to the detriment of the other residents.
As far as the tenants’ right of first refusal provisions, those should be declared unconstitutional, in court. The state of Colorado should not have the ability to declare that someone to whom I have not conveyed a right to buy my property, has any such right.
As far as the new proposal for rent control, the world has seen rent control many times, always with the same results. Shortages, deterioration of property quality, immobility of tenants, etc., etc., etc. Rent control is always counter-productive and bad.
The legislators who champion these sorts of laws claim to be addressing a “housing shortage.” Incredibly, with this stated goal, they pass and propose laws making it much less attractive for investors in lower-cost housing. Their laws actually produce the exact opposite effect of their stated goal. But somehow this all seems to work, in enabling these legislators to win elections by running around saying how they are “helping” tenants at the expense of the big, bad landlords, while the media are cheerleading. So, I guess this is all working for someone.
Support Local Journalism
Robert Rosenfeld
St. Louis, Missouri
