A lot rent cap passed the House and stopped
A lot rent cap passed the House and stopped
2026-09-15 · Pennsylvania · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
What would happen. HB 1250 would rewrite Pennsylvania's Manufactured Home Community Rights Act of 1976 to cap lot rent increases, guarantee residents the right to form an association, and require fee disclosure. It is not law. It passed the House on 10 June 2025 by 144-59 and was referred to the Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee on 18 June 2025, where it remains.1
The rent cap
Banded on inflation, with a floor and a ceiling. The bill provides that an increase is permitted only if "the aggregate increase in rent, fees, service charges and assessments does not exceed the average Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) for the Northeast Region, for the most recently available 12-month period. If the average 12-month CPI-U is: (i) lower than 2%, the community owner or operator may increase rent, fees, service charges and assessments by up to 2%; and (ii) greater than 4%, … by no more than 4%."2
Ninety days' notice is required, and no increase may be taken where the operator has an unresolved health or safety violation. The enforcement mechanism is self-executing: "Failure to comply with the procedures in this section shall render any attempted increase in rent, fees, service charges and assessments void and unenforceable in the courts of the Commonwealth."
The right to organise
A new § 4.2 would provide that "A manufactured home community owner may not prohibit or interfere with the operation of a resident association" and "shall allow group meetings on site between residents without any limitations related to the number of residents, location of the meetings and the timing of the meetings."2
A separate § 6.2 would supply a "justified rent increase" route for extraordinary operating-expense increases, plus a capital-improvement surcharge — the pressure valve that distinguishes this from a flat cap.
What the legislature said it was responding to
The bill opens with eleven paragraphs of findings, including: "Large corporations and private equity firms have been buying up manufactured home communities in this Commonwealth, leading to resident complaints of drastic increases in lot rents, a lack of onsite management and a lack of repairs."2
Why this belongs in a community-association publication
Because a manufactured-home community is the one form of common-interest living in Pennsylvania where the residents own their homes and someone else owns the ground — and that inversion is what makes the rent question unanswerable by the tools associations normally use.
A condominium owner unhappy with assessments can stand for the board. A manufactured-home resident unhappy with lot rent has no board to stand for. The owner of the land sets the rent, and the resident's home is a depreciating asset that is expensive and often physically impossible to move. That combination — owned home, rented ground, no exit — is the whole of the policy problem, and it is why Pennsylvania has had a Manufactured Home Community Rights Act since 1976 while it has no equivalent for any other housing form.
The scale is not marginal. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia figures cited in reporting on the bill put Pennsylvania at more than 2,288 manufactured-housing communities and roughly 55,900 households.3
Who is on each side
The 144-59 vote is emphatically bipartisan. The prime sponsor is Rep. Liz Hanbidge, a Democrat, and the co-sponsor list includes Republicans Dan Moul, Mark Gillen, Torren Ecker, Gary Day and Brenda Pugh.
The opposition is organised and specific. The Pennsylvania Manufactured Housing Association, whose executive vice president Mary Gaiski has characterised the measure as government-imposed rent control, is the principal industry voice. Notably, Rep. Moul — a co-sponsor — is himself a park owner, which suggests the industry is not uniformly opposed.
On the other side, the Coalition of Manufactured Home Communities of Pennsylvania, founded by Bob Besecker, and the Community Justice Project in Pittsburgh have been the visible advocates.
What fifteen months in committee means
The committee has not been idle, which is what makes the delay legible rather than mysterious. Senate Urban Affairs and Housing reported SB 746 as amended on 8 June 2026 and reported SB 1299 the same day. HB 1250 was on that meeting's notice — the meeting was called "to consider Senate Bills No. 746, 1299 and 1374; and House Bill No. 1250" — and no vote on HB 1250 was recorded.
The committee took up the bill and did not move it. That is a decision, and the pattern it fits is consistent: the Senate has been willing to advance the right-to-purchase half of the manufactured-housing agenda and unwilling to advance the rent-limit half.
The Governor's involvement
On 12 March 2026 Governor Shapiro visited Douglass Village, a 333-home community for residents aged 55 and over in Douglassville, Berks County, to press for lot-rent caps, a resident right of first refusal and sale-notification rules. Douglass Village was bought in 2022 by Kingsley Management, a Utah company, after which lot rents rose.4
The Governor's statement named the dynamic directly: "Owning your own home is the American dream, but in recent years, we've seen greedy out-of-state corporations buy up our communities, increase costs to unaffordable levels, and take advantage of Pennsylvanians." The release named HB 1250 and Sen. Schwank's Senate legislation, and tied both to the 2026-27 budget proposal.
Executive attention at that level has not moved the bill out of committee in the six months since.
What to watch, and the date
The session ends 30 November 2026. Pennsylvania has no carryover, so HB 1250 dies then unless the Senate reports it, passes it on three considerations, and the Governor signs it. The House reconvenes 28 September 2026.
Its predecessor, HB 805, was referred to committee in April 2023 and never moved. If HB 1250 dies in November it will be the second consecutive session in which a lot-rent measure passed nothing, and the legislative history will restart with new bill numbers in 2027-2028.
Related Pennsylvania HOA Topics
- HB 1250, 2025-2026 session — bill history (House passage 144-59, 10 June 2025) ↩
- HB 1250, Printer’s No. 1379 — bill text amending the Manufactured Home Community Rights Act ↩
- WESA, “Mobile home parks, rising lot rents” (Sept. 30, 2025) ↩
- Pa. DCED, Governor Shapiro calls for manufactured-home community reform (Mar. 12, 2026) ↩
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