But the 47-year-old resident of the Middlebrook mobile-home park in Germantown, Md., needs the water. She uses it for almost everything around her home — for cooking, gardening and cleaning her dishes. She has lived there for 15 years but says lately she cannot afford to keep up with the high water costs charged by the community’s landlord, Middlebrook MHC. She owns her home but has to rent the land it is parked on, in addition to other utilities. The monthly water bills have ranged as high as $790. Most recently, she paid $130 for a month of water, but only because “we took extreme measures to conserve the water,” Bonilla said in Spanish. That includes buying gallons of water from the store for her and her family to drink, keeping showers short and even turning the water off mid-shower while they soap up.
“No one should have to pay such an outrageous amount for water bills,” said Bonilla, who cleans houses for work.
Bonilla and other residents have been in a dispute with the landlord and the property manager, Horizon Land Management, over their water bills since 2018. On July 7, 28 of the residents filed a complaint, with support from the immigrant advocacy group CASA de Maryland, against Horizon Land Management and Middlebrook MHC in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
The complaint alleges the landlord and the property manager charge a flat rate for water and sewage that is higher than what residents would be charged directly by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC). It also alleges that Horizon has not fixed leaky underground pipes that fall under its purview and that tenants are expected to bear the costs of those leaks. When residents complained that the landlord and the property manager were not fulfilling their contractual and legal obligations, the suit says, they were threatened with eviction for not paying their rent.
Horizon Land Management, based in Crofton, Md., disputes the claims in the lawsuit. “We are deeply disturbed by the baseless and defamatory allegations in this lawsuit. Horizon Land Management operates Middlebrook in full accordance with the law,” the company said in a statement. “We value our community and work closely with residents to address concerns.”
Horizon also said in its statement that the residents’ claims of abnormally high water bills were previously “found to be without merit.” In two cases reviewed by investigators from the Montgomery County Office of Landlord-Tenant Affairs in November 2018 found that the property manager had an “acceptable explanation” for the utility-bill ratio. However, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) attended a news conference announcing the lawsuit this month and has voiced his support for the homeowners.
Middlebrook is one of 12 mobile-home communities that Horizon Land Management operates in the state. It manages a total of 170 parks across 20 states, including three in Virginia. Horizon Land Co., which is affiliated with the management company, is one of Middlebrook’s multiple investors, said Molly Boyle, a spokeswoman for Horizon Land Management.
Horizon Land Co. has been buying up mobile-home communities across the country since 2006, often with financing from real estate investment companies, institutional investors and Wall Street banks. As demand for affordable housing continues to grow, big-money investors see these communities — often home to seniors, veterans, low-income families and immigrants — as a reliable income generator. But housing advocates say that after buying these communities, the new corporate owners, often located far away, tend to raise rents and fees.
Elisabeth Voigt, policy and development director of Manufactured Housing Action, a national advocacy group for manufactured-home communities, said the homeowners are vulnerable to rent hikes and fee gouging because while in theory their houses can be relocated, in practice it is often not feasible.
“What we have seen is this influx of real estate investment firms and private-equity groups taking over portfolios of manufactured-home communities and exploiting the fact that residents can’t move their homes,” Voigt said. “Because it’s so difficult to move their homes, they will do whatever they can to stay.”
Middlebrook’s roughly 200 homes are filled with mostly Spanish-speaking residents, with documented and undocumented immigrants. Bonilla pays about $781 per month for rent, on top of the water bills, electricity bills and other utilities. She shares her home with four other people.
Before Middlebrook MHC bought the property in 2018, the cost of water and sewage was included in rent, residents said, but since then they say they have been charged for water and sewage separately. Bonilla shared one bill from mid-August 2018 to September 2018, showing she was charged $790.38 for a month’s worth of water and sewage. The landlord told her that her meter showed abnormally high usage, suggesting she had a leak, but Bonilla said she looked and did not find one.
Horizon Land Management’s Boyle said the property manager later provided Bonilla with a roughly $400 credit “for fixing the leak” in January 2019, after her meter showed that her water usage dropped.
The company does not profit from the water or sewage fees it charges resident, Boyle said. Residents may dispute the fees, but Middlebrook still has to pay the WSSC bill for the property. In cases like Bonilla’s, she said, the company absorbed part of the costs because the resident “fixed the leak.”
CASA organizers found that for roughly the past three months, water bills across the community have been inconsistent — the charges listed for water and sewage didn’t add up to the amount the company invoiced residents.
Alejandra Ortega, 42, and her husband bought a home in Middlebrook around 2006. She has started seeking other places to live because it has become harder for her to afford to stay there. On July 1, Ortega said, she was charged $291.66 for water and sewage for her home, which is less than 1,000 square feet. But the charges listed on the bill — $34.80 for water, $50.50 for sewage, plus other fees — totaled only $97.09.
Boyle said this was a technical error that started in May. Tenants’ listed usage and the breakdown of charges would incorrectly be from the previous month, but the total monthly charge at the top of the bill would be correct. After noticing the issue in July, she said, the company fixed the bills moving forward.
Like Bonilla, Ortega buys a $6 gallon of water twice a week to cook, make coffee and wash dishes. She takes quick showers and uses paper plates to avoid washing dishes. It is mainly just her and her husband at home these days, she said. Their three grown children are rarely there anymore. She said there are more residents affected by the water charges who are too fearful to join the lawsuit, as she did, because of their immigration status.
Bonilla said that she has privately tried to decode the water and sewer charges with the landlord’s staff but that the language barrier has caused issues. So for now, as she waits for the court case to proceed, she keeps her pots and pans ready to collect rainwater.
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