Owner of mobile home park must pay former residents

A mobile home park owner accused of forcing residents to move without compensation due to them has agreed to pay a $45,000 settlement nearly three years later.

Bill Chen, of Coraopolis, who owned Twin Circle Mobile Home Park, also will be permanently barred from owning a manufactured home community, according to an agreement signed last month by Mr. Chen and officials from the state attorney general’s office.

In 2016, residents in the Robinson mobile home park complained to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that they were being pushed out of their homes without time to adequately gather their belongings and without compensation due to them under a state law intended to protect mobile home park residents living in sites that are being redeveloped.

A number of residents had lived there for years and were disabled, elderly and low-income. Residents owned their homes and paid utilities and lot rent to Mr. Chen.

At the time, an attorney for Mr. Chen said no one at the Steubenville Pike community was “forced to leave.”

Under Pennsylvania’s Manufactured Home Community Rights Act, a 2012 law, residents are supposed to be paid $4,000 for a single-section trailer or $6,000

for a multi-section trailer to assist in relocation. If they aren’t able to move the home, they are due $2,500 or its appraised value, under the law.

The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office filed a complaint in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court against Mr. Chen and the park under the Manufactured Home Community Rights Act, as well as the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law.

“This is a clear case of a property owner failing to meet his legal obligations and denying residents payments to which they are entitled,” then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane said in a statement when the case was filed.

The $45,000 payment Mr. Chen must make will be “allocated as restitution to consumers who have been harmed,” according to court documents.

“This case was tied up in protracted court motions and other litigation, but our Bureau of Consumer Protection stayed on this case and has now successfully resolved it,” said Joe Grace, a spokesman for state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

The restitution “will be disbursed shortly,” he said.

The settlement is the second agreement of this type since the 2012 law, according to the attorney general’s office.

Mr. Chen’s attorney said the land has been cleared for redevelopment, but no development has taken place yet on the former park site. He said both parties worked hard to settle the issue.

Raymond Parr, a former resident of the park who now lives in a Washington County manufactured home community, said neither he nor his girlfriend had received any compensation, and estimated they had spent $10,000 on moving costs and acquiring a new trailer, because the old one couldn’t be moved.

“Nobody has given me 10 cents yet,” he said.

Mr. Parr’s girlfriend, Tanis Kanish, had lived in Twin Circle since 1995.

“There’s a lot of people on fixed incomes that were there longer than me,” she said.

Ms. Kanish said she has just recently finished paying off debt she took on to move. She said she believed the stress of having to find a new place to live and the financial strain led to health problems.

“It was a nightmare,” she said.