Letter to the editor: New mobile home laws will only increase the cost of housing – Summit Daily News

I am an owner of mobile home parks, including the one shown in the photo accompanying your article on new legislation regulating such properties. The recent laws passed by the Colorado Legislature targeting mobile home parks seem based on the assumption that owners of mobile home parks are generally bad-acting, irrational persons, who often harass good tenants.Common sense should tell anyone that is not the case.Landlords tend to be rational actors who seek to avoid unnecessary problems with their customers.

The legislation creates more obstacles for landlords, in dealing with bad-acting tenants, who make life difficult for the other residents. Landlordsenforce rules as a way of maintaining nice, safe communities for all the residents, not for any nefarious reason.I dont know of any business, in which there is any long-term benefit in treating good customers unfairly, and this includes mobile home parks. It is no fun dealing with bad-acting tenants, and the process to evict them has always been an expensive, lengthy and burdensome undertaking. There is no public benefit in laws which make it more difficultfor landlords to properly operate properties by enforcing rules.

Other provisions of the law involve improper government interference in the ability of private citizens to buy and sell property; it is wrong for the government to interject itself in transactions involving private-property owners.

The ultimate results of legislation such as this will be to increase housing costs, while driving investors out of the business of providing this type of housing and to make existing properties less safe and appealing for the residents.

The free market, left alone, provides landlords plenty of incentive to properly manage propertiesfor the benefit of all interested parties.

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Letter to the editor: New mobile home laws will only increase the cost of housing - Summit Daily News