The working group on the cap

The Board formed one at its December 11, 2025 meeting, after sustained pressure from the Delaware Manufactured Home Owners Association. Its composition: one appraiser, one mobile home mover, two DMHOA representatives, one community owner, plus the Chair and counsel as non-voting members. It was to convene in 2026.

The April 30, 2026 minutes record that the task force meeting was “fruitful, cordial, and informative,” with the next expected in June 2026. Board members pushed back on scope in a line that frames the whole disagreement: “it is transition funding not insurance.”

Public comment at the same meeting again raised “concerns with the current relocation Cap not being high enough for residents who are possibly on fixed incomes.”

The Board now has the authority to move the cap. SB 144, effective September 3, 2025, replaced the statutory $15 million Trust Fund cap with a discretionary one: “The DMHRA Board may establish and adjust the cap on the Trust Fund based on the costs reasonably necessary to carry out the purposes of the Trust Fund.” Section 7041(c)(3) lets the Board, on three of five votes, authorise payments and adjust the assessment and the cap.

Who is actually being displaced

The minutes give the caseload, and it is not small:

• Timberlane — 105 affected tenants, 11 remaining as of April 2026
• Lake Forest — 26 affected, 11 remaining
• Lazy Pine Retreat — 7 affected

And communities in play: Holly Oak (awaiting settlement); Pinewood Acres (right-of-first-offer letters mailed to all tenants on April 7, 2026, with no tenant interest in buying or forming the required homeowners association as of April 30); Winterset Farms (no longer for sale).

The Pinewood Acres line deserves attention, because it is the resident-purchase mechanism failing in real time. Delaware gives residents a right of first offer when a community goes up for sale — and exercising it requires organising a homeowners association and financing a purchase inside the notice window. Every tenant received the letter. None pursued it.

That is the practical gap the Delaware State Housing Authority's Affordable Housing Production Task Force identified in its April 2025 final report, whose Objective 8 was to “assist in purchasing manufactured home communities by homeowners.” The task force concluded and its output became SB 23, which contains nothing on this.

Why $12,000 is the number under argument

The gap between a relocation benefit and the cost of the situation is documented elsewhere in Delaware's record, and it is wide.

Many older manufactured homes cannot be moved at all, which is why the Authority's schedule distinguishes relocatable from non-relocatable benefits. For a non-relocatable home, the payment is not moving expenses — it is compensation for the loss of a dwelling the resident owns, on land they do not.

The Board's “transition funding not insurance” framing is a real position and worth stating fairly: the fund is capitalised by a per-lot assessment, not by premiums, and it was designed to help with a move rather than to indemnify a loss. The residents' position is equally clear from the public comment: on a fixed income, the difference between $12,000 and the value of the home is not bridgeable.

Delaware's own required disclosure document is caught in the middle. The DOJ's Chapter 70 summary — which a community owner must give prospective lot-lease tenants — uses “fair market value” language, and DMHOA's public comment attacked it precisely because residents read that and then encounter a $12,000 non-relocatable benefit.

Other Board actions worth knowing

Delinquency enforcement. Dackerg, Duck Creek and Forest Park were referred for legal action on a 4-0 vote on April 30, 2026. Countryside Hamlet is nine quarters behind. The policy is: one quarter late draws an email notice; two or more draws a Board referral.

An HOA delisting policy. In December 2025 the Authority drafted a Policies and Procedures addition: “Failure to be in compliance with the above requirements will result in your HOA being removed from our HOA listing on our website,” with the annual request letter sent January 5, 2026.

Insurance. The Board directed a consultation with the Insurance Commissioner “to explore policy options or referrals related to insurance/relocation funding.”

Accessibility. State readability rules forced the Authority to convert its forms to 14-point editable Word documents, because scanned PDF payment coupons are not compliant.

What to watch next

The working group's June 2026 meeting and any Board vote on the cap. The Board can now raise it without legislation, which makes this the one place in Delaware manufactured-housing policy where change does not require the General Assembly.

Minutes are posted only through April 30, 2026; the Board also met June 4 and August 27. Note also that § 7042 still carries a bracket providing that the Trust Fund expires July 1, 2029 unless terminated sooner or extended — a date nobody has addressed and which arrives in under three years.