Tonight the city of Bend is scheduled to take up a new mobile home park ordinance. It’s like the old mobile home park ordinance in that it’s bad, but it’s bad in a new way. To give you an idea of how bad, the city even excludes itself from having to abide by its own ordinance if it is going to force closure of a mobile home park.

First, let’s remember how we got here. Bend passed a mobile home park ordinance in June. The City Council acted fast to protect tenants facing eviction from three parks in the city. The mobile home park owners were looking to sell or redevelop their property.

There is already a provision in state law to protect tenants. The law requires mobile home park owners to give tenants a 180-day notice of eviction or pay $3,500 for moving costs. Park owners aren’t required to pay if tenants are given a year’s notice or more. Tenants are also eligible for a $10,000 tax credit if they are involuntarily moved.

The city of Wilsonville found those protections inadequate and hatched its own ordinance. Under that ordinance, owners had to pay to relocate mobile homes or pay the mobile home owner the fair market value of the home – whichever the mobile home owner chooses. Bend’s ordinance did all that and was retroactive to March, though it was passed in June.

The council essentially bushwhacked Bend park owners with a new law. It changed the rules on them, making closing a mobile home park suddenly very expensive. Even as Bend councilors voted for the ordinance, they acknowledged it was flawed. A city attorney cautioned that it might trigger lawsuits. The city did not even bother to meet with owners.

Then came the first lawsuit. Just recently, a Clackamas County Circuit Court threw out Wilsonville’s ordinance. The judge called the Wilsonville ordinance “unduly burdensome” and said it required a park owner to spend “extraordinary sums of money” to evict tenants. That decision does not invalidate Bend’s ordinance because it was a decision of only a county court. It is, though, a sign that Bend’s ordinance would also fail a legal challenge.

Meanwhile, city councilors, representatives of mobile home park tenants and a couple park owners have been meeting to come up with an alternative to Bend’s ordinance. The new ordinance basically allows owners to avoid some of the burden of Bend’s ordinance if they create some affordable housing. In return, property owners get their property rezoned for increased density.

Some mobile home park owners may find they can make more money under this new ordinance and that it’s better than the one it replaces. But it’s still burdensome. It still changes the rules on park owners. And if the density upzone is really so attractive, why does the council need to keep the old ordinance around to force park owners to take the upzone?

We would rather the Bend council did not set itself up again to lose a lawsuit by supporting the new ordinance.