What did not survive the amendment process

The enacted text is materially narrower than the bill as introduced, which also barred mid-lease billing changes and required 90 days' notice of a change in utility billing. Neither provision is law. A resident told that a park cannot change its utility billing method mid-lease is being told something the legislature considered and did not enact.

Why this sits on an HOA site

Illinois manufactured-home communities are consistently conflated with homeowner associations, and the legal frameworks are entirely separate. Residents of a manufactured-home community own the home and rent the lot; their statute is 765 ILCS 745, not the Condominium Property Act or the Common Interest Community Association Act. There is no board, no declaration and no assessment.

Where the two genuinely meet is in resident-owned communities and in parks where a homeowners association has formed to represent residents in dealings with the park owner. In those, the association is the natural party to demand the annual written allocation explanation and the monthly bills, because it is the only entity with the capacity to read them.

The disclosure right is the enforceable part

Subsection (a) is a substantive cap, but a resident cannot tell whether it has been breached without the underlying numbers. Subsection (b) supplies them, and it is the provision residents and resident associations can actually use:

• the annual written explanation of the calculation is owed without being asked for;
• copies of the monthly utility bills are owed on request, for any utility separately billed under the section.

With both in hand the arithmetic is checkable: total billed to the park, total allocated to residents, and whether the ratio exceeds 80% where no common-area meter exists. A park that will not produce the bills is the park most worth asking.

What operators have to build

Two processes that most Illinois parks did not have on January 1, 2026: an annual written allocation disclosure delivered to every tenant, and a bill-production procedure that can respond to a request without redacting the figures that make the allocation checkable. Neither is difficult; both are new.

The capital question — meter the common areas or absorb the 20% — should be run against actual irrigation and amenity load rather than assumed. Parks that have never measured it do not know the answer.

What to watch next

Whether the 105th General Assembly revives the notice and mid-lease provisions that were stripped, and whether the separate lot-rent cap returns alongside them. Utility pass-through and rent are functionally the same money to a resident, and a cap on one invites pressure on the other.