Committee advances memorial seeking clearer utility oversight for mobile home parks
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Summary
A House committee gave a due pass to House Memorial 54, which asks state regulators to convene stakeholders and recommend ways to ensure reliable utility service and clearer landlord obligations in manufactured/mobile home communities after repeated outages were reported.
A House committee on [date not specified in the transcript] voted to give House Memorial 54 a due pass after the bill sponsor described repeated, multi‑day utility outages at manufactured home communities and urged new, faster remedies than litigation.
The sponsor (identified only in the transcript as the representative presenting HM54) said one park in their district, Albuquerque Meadows, has about 400 spaces and roughly 700 residents and that an aging water system has produced outages lasting "4, 5, 6, 7 days at a time." The sponsor said landlords have sometimes responded by providing two portable toilets, which the sponsor called inadequate for a community of that size, and asked the committee to back a study group or other non‑litigation remedy that could provide quicker enforcement or compliance hearings than the attorney general suing for relief.
Sherrick Roanhorse of PNM told the committee HM54 "addresses a real issue" and described utility service in such settings as governed by a "patchwork of responsibilities and regulatory frameworks," arguing that clearer coordination and PRC‑convened stakeholder recommendations would help. Maria Grego of the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty said manufactured home communities are New Mexico's largest source of naturally occurring affordable housing and urged the measure as "a constructive first step" while noting broader problems—rising rents and limited enforcement—remain.
During questioning, a committee member asked whether utilities are the owner's responsibility inside a park. The sponsor and staff responded the Mobile Home Act and the Mobile Home Resident Act place responsibility on the park owner to maintain utilities from the public main into residents' sites. The sponsor said whether to treat small parks differently from large parks is a question for the working group called for in the memorial.
Representative Anya Narnu moved a due pass, the motion was seconded and the chair announced the memorial had received a due pass from the committee.
The next step noted in the hearing was preparing the memorial for the floor; the sponsor and proponents requested follow‑up by the working group and consultations with regulators and affected residents.