Mobile-home owners are taking their fight for greater control over their homes and their lives to the Utah legislature tomorrow with a rally to support HB 63.---

The bill is aimed at providing mobile-home owners more protection against predatory practices by park owners. Among the modifications it is seeking is limiting the owner's legal ability to raise the rent no more than once a year. You can read the bill here.

Rep. Janice Fisher, D-West Valley, is sponsoring HB 63 and will lead a press conference and rally at the State Capitol tomorrow, Wednesday, at 1 p.m. Along with 50 mobile-home-park residents, organizers expect Sen. Karen Mayne, D-West Valley -- a longtime supporter of mobile-home-owners' rights, the Utah Housing Coalition and Crossroads Urban Center -- to join Fisher.

Because mobile-home owners do not own the pads their trailers are parked on, they are particularly vulnerable to a combination of park owners' unscrupulous practices and laws that do very little to protect trailer-residents' rights. Whether it's repeatedly raising the rent without notice, cutting utility services without warning or using deception, threats or violence to get trailer owners to sign horrendously unfair leases, mobile-home owners complain that they have very little to protect them. 

"The rights of Utahns who live in mobile parks are being trampled," Fisher stated in a press release. "Imagine what it would be like if you had to worry about your landlord or your bank raising your rent or mortgage payments seven times in a single year! Now is the time for the Legislature to stand up for the thousands of Utah citizens who are being mistreated."