BY JOANNE DEMICHELE
President
Land of Enchantment Manufactured Home Owners Alliance

HM54’s call for a Working Group to address regulation of New Mexico’s mobile/manufactured home communities (MHCs) is both necessary and urgent. Tens of thousands of New Mexicans live in these communities for workforce housing and as an affordable means of aging in place in a community.

MHCs have land-lease businesses that provide essential services—water, sewer, gas, electricity, and safe access—to residents who own their homes but rent the land beneath them. Because these homes are effectively immobile, residents are captive tenants. When infrastructure fails, the harm is immediate and severe and options are limited.

In 2024, seniors in a New Mexico MHC of nearly 100 homes went six months without natural gas, leaving them without heat or hot water or cooking facilities. Across the state, residents have experienced recurring water outages and raw sewage backing up into occupied homes. These are clear health and safety violations and breaches of a warranty of habitability. In most other situations, such conditions would trigger immediate inspection and enforcement. In many other states, it does.

We support HM54 as an important first step. Licensing and regulation are essential to identify responsible parties and enable oversight. However, these failures also raise consumer protection, landlord-tenant, and public health concerns that cannot be resolved by regulation alone. 

Businesses providing essential services to captive, aging, low-income, and disabled residents must be held to the same health and safety standards applied elsewhere. Routine inspections—like those required of restaurants—prevent crises before they occur. Unlike restaurant patrons, MHC residents cannot simply go elsewhere.

Many states address these risks with a comprehensive approach. It is time for New Mexico to protect and preserve this important source of affordable housing and its vulnerable citizens.

HM54 begins a necessary conversation. We urge that it lead to meaningful enforcement and accountability.