A long-running class action lawsuit in King County, Washington has finally been settled, meaning mobile home landlords across the state will no longer be able to suddenly and frequently raise rent prices. The class action settlement affects approximately 60,000 to 70,000 tenants living in 1,600 mobile home parks in Washington State.

The class action lawsuit began in 2004 when tenants of a Shoreline mobile home park sued the owner for raising the rent on them twice in one year, which is illegal in the State of Washington. The owner belonged to Manufactured Housing Communities of Washington, an industry group that creates lease-agreement forms for its members that contained automatic conversion language. This conversion language allowed the landlords to automatically convert an annual lease to a month-to-month contract, essentially allowing the landlords to increase rent more than once a year, a practice that is illegal under Washington State law. State law also requires owners to give tenants a three-month notification of a rent increase, which the mobile home landlords were not providing.

“A lot of people, even if landlords are raising rents just once a year, are in dire straits. They can’t afford these ever increasing rents,” said an attorney representing the tenants.

The class action lawsuit settlement requires mobile-home park owners to drop the conversion language from its leases and stop using contracts that allowed them to automatically convert an annual lease to a month-to-month lease. The settlement does not provide reimbursements for class members, but it does allow the tenants to pursue back rent.

“While it took more than six years to reach a settlement, we are pleased that – finally -- every manufactured homeowner in the state will be living under a legal lease,” said the tenants’ attorney.