The most difficult problem currently experienced by the mobile home plot
tenant is eviction from a lot with insufficient notice and without cause.
Eviction can often be more devastating for a mobile home plot tenant
than for the traditional residential tenant because the tenant of a mobile
home plot must not only move all of his or her personal possessions, but
must also expend in the vicinity of $1,000 - $2,000 to move his or her
mobile home and, what is sometimes even more difficult, find a mover
and a new lot.
1977 FINAL LEGISLATIVE REPORT, supra, at 168; see a/so Holiday Resort Cmty. Ass'n
v. Echo Lake Assocs., 134 Wn. App. 210, 224, 135 P.3d 499 (legislative purpose in
enacting the MHLTA was to regulate and protect mobile home owners by providing
stable, long-term tenancy for homeowners living in a mobile home park).
The MHLTA provides for stable, long-term tenancy by creating the presumption
of a year-to-year periodic tenancy. Though it may seem counterintuitive to require only
a writing for long-term leases of mobile home lots when other tenancies expressly
require, acknowledgement for leases over a year, MHLTA leases are fundamentally
different from other tenancies. This difference is deliberate, due at least in part to the
fact that '"[t]he park resident is in the unique position of owning his home while renting
the land on which it is placed."' OFFICE OF PROGRAM RESEARCH, supra, at 1 (quoting
Lyle F. Nyberg, Note, The Community and the Park Owner Versus the Mobile Home
Park Resident:
.
Reforming the Landlord-. Tenant Relationship,
' . . . 52 B.U. L. REV. 810, 813
(1972)). This unique position results in unequal bargaining power between the park
landlord and the mobile home tenant; these tenants require the security of a longer