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HOW TO HANDLE CITY INSPECTORS REGARDING MOBILE HOME PARKS
By Frank Rolfe
Nobody can own a mobile home park without having at least one
run-in with the city inspector. They normally come out of nowhere, and often
when you think you are doing a great job with your park. There is no reason for
embarrassment – everyone has been there.
Normally what triggers an inspector showing up at your park is a complaint from
a tenant or a neighbor. Often the tenant complaint has been made by someone
trying to block their eviction for non-payment of rent (similar to pulling the
fire alarm to try and get out of your calculus test). It has nothing to do with
your management of the park, or any defect in the park. The neighbor normally
complains due to loud music, or a park tenant creating havoc, and again has
nothing do with your management faults. Yet, to cause the park trouble, he
builds it up into some huge complaint and embellishes it with a pile of made up
stories. So you should never take it personally when an inspector shows up – it
is not a condemnation of your work.
The correct way to deal with an inspector has two parts: 1) be as nice as you
can and, if that fails, then 2) be as mean as you can.
First, the nice part. You can often get rid of the inspector by agreeing to
everything he asks, and brown nosing him like crazy. Tell him that it is your
goal to make this the nicest park in town, and will accept nothing less. Look
like you are on his team. Let him blow off any steam and then accept complete
guilt and plead for forgiveness. Whatever it takes to make the guy happy, within
reason, do. It is a lot cheaper than the next option that we are going to
discuss. So fix that sign, trim that tree --- whatever the inspector wants you
to do, no matter how much you dislike the guy. Most of the time, this plan
works, and you won’t see the inspector again for a long time.
If the nice act doesn’t work, then it’s time to get mean. You cannot complain
that the inspector is being too hard on you – nobody is going to accept the idea
that your mobile home park is a dreamland. However, the inspector must work
within legal means, and that is his weak spot. By being mean, I am not
advocating slashing his car tires. Instead, I am advocating that you take a
moral indignation position that you have done a great job with the park and you
are not going to sit back and let some inspector criticize your property with no
basis in fact. And you back up your position with the help of a hard-nosed
lawyer who knows landlord case law, and is not afraid of a little confrontation.
Often times, in your mean stage, the best solution is to have your attorney call
the city attorney, and threaten him with a litany of legal actions. This often
works because the city attorney does not want to mess with such a trivial item
and time-waster. Although the inspector may not know how to spell
G-R-A-N-D-F-A-T-H-E-R-E-D, the city attorney does. And the city attorney can
sometimes shake up the inspector with a simple phone call telling him to back
off. In fact, going over his head is often the best way to emasculate the
inspector and put him back in his place. Although a bully, he cannot take much
pressure himself, and may run and hide and never bother you again.
If that does not work, here’s a real solution that I have used that has nearly
lethal success in stopping an inspector cold. Remember that the ticket that a
inspector gives you is just the same as a traffic ticket, and must be dealt with
in municipal court. And cases in court have the right to a jury trial. So file
for a jury trial on your ticket. Why? It puts a lot of pressure on the court
system to hold a jury trial, and won’t be heard for a long time. And the city
knows as well as anyone that the average jury hates city officials and always
sides with the common man, being beaten up by the heartless bureaucracy. In
other words, you are probably going to win. And the city knows that.
I once had a park where an over-zealous inspector gave me over 20 tickets for
code violations. So I filed for 20 jury trials. The judge dismissed all of the
tickets, rather than tie his court up for months with jury trials. He even
called the inspector and told him never to mess with me again, and he never did.
So there’s the system. It’s simple, and it has the best chance of success that I
know of. Remember that, when dealing with an inspector, be as nice as your can
and, if that fails, be as mean as you can. One without the other greatly reduces
your odds of success.
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