DCED regulates the home, not the park
DCED regulates the home, not the park
2026-09-15 · Pennsylvania · Regulation
What is the case. Pennsylvania regulates the manufactured home and not the community it sits in. The Department of Community and Economic Development is the State Administrative Agency for manufactured housing, working with HUD on construction standards — and it says on its own page that complaints about a community owner go somewhere else entirely.1
What DCED actually does
It "handles all consumer complaints for new manufactured homes and establishes habitability and installation standards for relocated manufactured homes."1 The regulations are 12 Pa. Code Chapter 143, covering "the design, manufacture, storage, transportation and installation of manufactured housing," enforced by DCED's Housing Standards Division.2
Chapter 143 is fifteen sections — definitions, scope, applicable standards, labels, certification, manufacturer records, size calculations, consumer complaints, investigations, hearings and fees. It was adopted in March 1992, renumbered in 1997, and last amended on 8 September 2006, effective 8 November 2006. There has been no rulemaking under it in 2025 or 2026.
The referral
On communities, DCED's page says, verbatim: "For complaints against an owner of a manufactured home community (mobile home park), for community related issues, please contact the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Bureau of Consumer Protection at 1.800.441.2555."1
So the Manufactured Home Community Rights Act — a statute on the books since 1976 — is enforced, in practice, by a consumer-complaint telephone line. There is no inspectorate, no licensing of community operators, and no agency with supervisory jurisdiction over a park.
The pattern this completes
It is the same shape that runs through the whole of Pennsylvania's common-interest housing regulation, and seeing it in one place is useful.
Community association managers: no licence, no bonding, no board — and complaints routed to the same Bureau of Consumer Protection. Homeowners and condominium associations: no supervising agency, with a statutory complaint route to that same Bureau for records, meeting and voting failures. Manufactured-home communities: standards for the box, nothing for the park, and the same telephone number.
Pennsylvania has, in effect, one regulator for all of common-interest housing, and it is a consumer-protection bureau responding to complaints rather than an agency supervising a sector. Whatever one thinks of that as policy, for a board or a resident it is the operating reality: nobody is checking, and something becomes a problem when somebody complains.
The bill that would create the missing regulator
HB 2098 would consolidate the Manufactured Home Community Rights Act into the Consolidated Statutes as a new Chapter 83 of Title 68, repeal the 1976 act, and establish an Office of Manufactured Home Ombudsman, the position of Ombudsman, a Manufactured Home Hearing Board, and a Manufactured Home Restricted Account, with duties imposed on DCED.3
It was introduced by Rep. Joe Ciresi and referred to the House Housing and Community Development Committee on 11 December 2025. It has had no action.
The memo from two weeks ago
The newest development in this space is not a bill. On 1 September 2026 Sen. Steven Santarsiero circulated a co-sponsorship memorandum announcing a Senate companion. Verbatim: "In the near future, I intend to introduce a Senate companion to House Bill 2098 to establish an Office of Manufactured Housing Ombudsman in Pennsylvania."4
The described powers are substantial. The ombudsman would "Review the reasonableness and validity of proposed rent increases, rule changes, and evictions, with the authority to stay those actions while a matter is under review", would help resolve disputes over "lot rent, community rules, leases, residency approvals, and evictions", and would address "environmental, health, and safety concerns, including problems involving drinking water and sewage systems." It would also create a Manufactured Housing Hearing Board. The memo names Buckingham Springs in Bucks County as the community driving it.
A power to stay a rent increase pending review is a different order of intervention from a cap. It is the kind of authority a regulator has and a statute does not.
What a co-sponsorship memo is worth
This is where honesty matters, because Pennsylvania's memo system makes intentions visible long before anything exists. Each memo page carries the line "This document has not been submitted for introduction yet." A memo is not a bill. It has no number, no text, no committee and no status.
The cautionary example is in the same policy area. On 2 December 2024 Sen. Judith Schwank circulated a memo stating: "I will soon reintroduce legislation to amend Section 4.1 of the Manufactured Home Community Rights Act 261 to establish a cap on the amount of yearly land rent increases… This legislation was previously introduced as SB861."5
Twenty-one months later it has not been introduced. The other two bills in that senator's package — SB 745 and SB 746 — were both introduced on 3 June 2025. The rent-cap bill was not. Its predecessor, SB 861, had died in committee in the previous session.
So: a memo from a senior senator, naming a specific statutory section and a specific predecessor bill, in a package whose other components were introduced on schedule, has produced nothing in nearly two years. Read the Santarsiero memo with that in mind. It is real evidence of intent and it is not a bill.
What to watch next
Whether the Santarsiero companion is actually introduced before the session ends on 30 November 2026 — and if it is, it will have roughly two months to travel a path no manufactured-housing bill has completed in this session. HB 2098 itself has been in committee since December 2025 without a hearing.
One federal administrative note for anyone working with DCED's installation programme: HUD has changed monitoring contractors, and DCED's page records that "SEBA Professional Service is no longer accepting the Form HUD 309," with submissions now going to [email protected].
Related Pennsylvania HOA Topics
- Pa. DCED — Manufactured Housing (jurisdiction and complaint referral) ↩
- 12 Pa. Code Chapter 143 (Manufactured Housing), last amended 2006 ↩
- HB 2098, 2025-2026 session — Office of Manufactured Home Ombudsman ↩
- Sen. Santarsiero, co-sponsorship memorandum, “Protecting Residents of Manufactured Home Communities” (Sept. 1, 2026) ↩
- Sen. Schwank, co-sponsorship memorandum, “Yearly Land Rent Increase Cap for Manufactured Homes” (Dec. 2, 2024) — not introduced ↩
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