Renters at a Pima County trailer park are making do without hot water or stoves after the company that supplies their propane said itβs too dangerous to refill their tanks.
The renters are lucky their homes havenβt gone up in flames, said a representative of the company that rents tanks to the park owner. On six of the seven trailers at Eagles Nest mobile home park on East Benson Highway, the park owner set up large propane tanks β as big as 120 gallons β with regulators meant for small tanks on barbecue grills, said April Knoll of Arizona Propane.
βYou cannot run a whole house on that size regulator. It could cause lots of damage,β Knoll said. βIt is pretty amazing that something hasnβt happened yet.β
The company put a note on the door of each resident last week saying it would no longer refill the unsafe tanks. The note said if the situation isnβt fixed in 30 days, the company will take back the tanks.
βOur job is to make sure everything is safe,β Knoll said. βIf we go in there and start filling tanks running off of barbecue regulators, that could put us in deep trouble.β
It would cost $100 apiece for the tanks to get appropriate regulators, she said.
Sergio Leyva, owner of Eagles Nest, denied there is a safety issue when reached by phone on Monday. When the Star asked whether he was going to replace the regulators, Leyva said he had to speak with his lawyer. He has not returned messages left since then.
A lawyer, whom Leyva previously identified as his attorney, also did not return two messages this week.
Knoll said she talked to Leyva and also warned him that some trailers have natural-gas water heaters that canβt be safely converted to receive propane.
βHe should be replacing those as well,β she said.
Renter Kylie Collins, who has an 11-month-old daughter, said she feared for her safety when she kept smelling propane in her trailer earlier this year and her landlord wouldnβt respond to her requests for a repair. She finally called the Fire Department in March, and the responding officer disconnected the propane tank. He said the tank was not compatible with the trailerβs natural-gas water heater and that the barbecue regulator posed an immediate hazard.
LIMITED CODE ENFORCEMENT
But the fire district cannot force the landlord to bring utilities up to code, said Willie Treatch, Rural/Metro Fire Department deputy fire marshal.
In Pima County, code enforcement is disseminated among various departments, including Development Services, which includes code enforcement; various fire districts; and the county Department of Environmental Quality, which deals with issues like raw sewage outside of residential properties.
But none has the authority to enforce inside residential properties. As the Star reported in June, thatβs because Pima County has intentionally adopted a limited set of property maintenance codes to avoid the expense of enforcing a more robust code that would apply to the inside of residential properties.
Confusion remains over whether Pima County has oversight of mobile homesβ safety. Carmine DeBonis, Pima County Development Services director, said mobile-home tenants can make complaints about problems inside their homes β such as heating and cooling or electrical issues β to the stateβs Office of Manufactured Housing, in the Arizona Department of Fire, Building and Life Safety.
But thatβs not the case, said Debra Blake, deputy director of the Office of Manufactured Housing. The state officeβs oversight ends after the trailers are constructed and installed, she said. Local jurisdictions are responsible for dealing with reports of code violations or zoning code issues, like adding on decks, she said.
Commercial properties are more strictly regulated in the county, Treatch said. Fire districts have enforcement authority there and can issue citations, and even shut a building down if thereβs an unaddressed hazard.
LITTLE RECOURSE FOR TENANTS
Mobile-home park residents who rent their trailers have little recourse unless they have the money to hire a lawyer and pressure their landlord using the stateβs landlord-tenant laws. They also can request a hearing through the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings for $50.
At Eagles Nest, residents donβt have any hot water, stoves or heat, which will be a bigger problem in the winter.
βItβs not right,β said renter Chico el Santo, 52, who has lived in the park for about a year. βSo many of them (landlords) want money for doing nothing. At some point, the city or county should step in and do something.β
Collins has been boiling water on an electric hot plate and using it to bathe her baby. She said sheβs been trying to move, but she hasnβt been able to find anyone who will rent to her because she has an eviction on her record because of the ongoing dispute over the propane tanks.
Months ago she withheld rent payments in an effort to pressure her landlord, Leyva, to repair the tank. Legal advocates say withholding rent is never a good idea because nonpayment can be a valid basis for eviction, but Collins said she didnβt know what else to do.
Leyva filed an eviction in Pima County Justice Court, but Collins appealed with her own complaint about what she said are her landlordβs failures under the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. Her case is now in Superior Court and she says she is making rent payments to the Justice Court.
She said sheβs fed up that no one is holding her landlord accountable. Various facets of local code enforcement keep βpointing the finger at somebody else,β she said.
CITY ENFORCEMENT
The situation might be different if Eagles Nest were a mile to the west or a quarter mile north, inside Tucson city limits.
City code enforcement has the authority to go after landlords under a Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance, adopted in 2003. The cityβs code enforcement department used to send inspectors to look for violations and fine negligent property owners as part of a slum-abatement task force. But since the recession, the department has fewer inspectors on staff and mostly responds to complaints.
About seven years ago, Pima County considered creating something like the cityβs slum task force. But it abandoned the area because of anticipated costs in the millions β including the cost of relocating people whose homes were condemned.
Yves Khawam, Pima Countyβs chief building official, said the Development Services Department could possibly expand its authority to situations in which low-income tenants are exploited by landlords. But he said the department would need a proposal quantifying how often that happens and how much it could cost to tackle the problem.
βIf this is a service that could be beneficial on a small scale,β he said, βthat could be something we could consider.β
