Residents In Western Pennsylvania Mobile Home Park Face Eviction After Land Owner Loses Property To Foreclosure

In Robinson, Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review reports:

• Off Route 22 in Washington County, doors and loose siding on empty trailers rattle in the summer breeze, and 12 families find themselves facing an eviction order. Many tenants of Maple Grove Trailer Park in Robinson live month-to-month on fixed incomes; some are slowed by age or illness; others own trailers too old to move or that can't be moved because of additions and renovations. But on Aug. 5, a constable handed out papers saying they had until Thursday to move, on the orders of the latest in a succession of owners.(1)

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• Under the state's Mobile Home Park Rights Act, the residents' legal rights could hinge on their lease and the new owners' plans for the property, said Kenneth Hirsch, a professor at the Duquesne University School of Law. "As long as it's a trailer park, the residents have the right to stay on forever as long as they comply with park rules and pay their rent," Hirsch said. "The exception is if the new owner intends to close down the trailer park. That has to be at the end of the lease period, and they have to be given more than 15 days." No applications for development or a change in use at the park have been filed with the township, Dorsey said. However, if the lease is for less than a year or the tenants are staying from month to month, the 15-day notice could be legal, Hirsch said.

For more, see Maple Grove Trailer Park residents ordered out by new owner.

(1) According to the story, the trouble began after the trailer park's previous owner David Dewald died of cancer in 2007 and his wife, Celeste, took over, residents said. Financial trouble sent the property into foreclosure, and it was sold to Bayview in a sheriff's sale in July 2008, said Capt. Jim Altman, who oversaw the Washington County Sheriff's Auction.