The question the announcement does not answer

Who pays for the upgrades.

The press release does not say, and neither does the project page. That silence is the load-bearing part of this story, because Delaware statute already supplies a mechanism by which residents pay — and it was made permanent this year.

Capital improvements are a permitted justification for an above-inflation lot rent increase. Delaware's Rent Increase Justification framework, at 25 Del. C. ch. 70 subch. VI, lets a community owner exceed the published CPI-U ceiling where the increase is justified — and a capital improvement is one of the grounds.³

A state-catalogued list of 98 ageing wastewater systems is therefore also a documented pipeline of future capital projects, each of which can support a justified rent increase.

No Delaware outlet has connected those two facts. We are stating the statutory relationship, not predicting anyone's conduct.

What the law limits, and what it does not

Two constraints matter, and both bear on residents.

Only direct costs count. The Delaware Supreme Court held in July 2025 that a community owner may recover only the direct costs of a capital improvement — not a return on investment, not depreciation, not the income tax owed on the increased rent. A community owner in that case sought an 8% return, depreciation and taxes on top of a $219,752 project and got none of it.

Ordinary repair is not a capital improvement. The same case reaffirmed the line: a capital improvement acquires or enhances a long-term, non-recurring asset, while ordinary repair is “regular, normal, and usual.” Replacing a section of drainage pipe the owner had “always replaced” was repair, and folding it into a larger project did not convert it.

That distinction is going to do real work here. Patching a failing septic field is repair. Replacing a community's treatment system is an improvement. Which label attaches to a given project decides whether residents fund it through rent.

One qualification: that decision construed § 7052(d), and SB 235, signed July 23, 2026, provides that the permanent §§ 7052A/7052B calculations replace the § 7052 grounds. How the direct-cost rule survives that transition is unresolved.

The enforcement route that now exists

DNREC is explicitly not enforcing. But since September 2025 there is a route that runs elsewhere.

SB 40 added 25 Del. C. § 7005(c): a landlord's pattern or practice of Chapter 70 violations is “deemed an unlawful practice under § 2513 of Title 6” where the condition was not caused by the tenant's want of due care, the landlord had actual notice, failed to correct in a timely way, and the condition created a risk to health, safety or property. The same Act let the Attorney General petition for a receivership and intervene. Our report on that package covers it.

The connection to this survey is the “actual notice” element. A state field assessment documenting a failing system, delivered to a community owner, is notice in a form that is hard to dispute later.

The itemised maintenance duties that would have made this cleaner did not pass. HB 39 would have made community owners expressly responsible for maintaining grounds so that standing water does not accumulate, and for all landlord-provided utilities up to the physical connection to the home. It cleared the House 39-0 and died in a Senate committee.

Where the complaints already are

The survey is documenting something residents have been reporting. Delaware's Manufactured Housing Ombudsperson lists community conditions — flooding, drainage and standing water, “especially in Sussex County” — among its recurring complaint themes, and Sussex accounted for 27 of 50 complaints in its last reported year.

The Common Interest Community Ombudsperson reports the same geography for a different population: “many complaints involved Sussex County water-runoff issues.”

Options for a resident or homeowners association

Participate in the field assessment. The project has a comment form and a published field schedule. A documented condition is the evidence every subsequent route depends on — the § 7005(c) notice element, an Ombudsperson complaint, and any challenge to how a resulting project is characterised.

Get organised before a rent notice arrives, not after. State-funded legal representation for a rent-increase challenge requires a homeowners association representing at least 25% of homeowners, or a majority of noticed homeowners, and only where the increase is 3% or more above CPI-U. Building that in a 30-day window is much harder than building it in advance.

Ask for the direct-cost ledger. If a project is offered as justification, the recoverable figure is direct cost. Anything labelled return, depreciation or tax is not.

What to watch next

Phase 2's findings, which will be the first systematic public account of Delaware manufactured-home infrastructure. And whether any funding mechanism accompanies them — EPA grants and State Revolving Fund money paid for the survey, and nothing announced covers the repairs.

The Delaware State Housing Authority's Affordable Housing Production Task Force concluded in April 2025 with an objective to “assist in purchasing manufactured home communities by homeowners.” Its output became SB 23, which contains nothing on the subject.