In the ongoing fight for housing equity, one group continues to be overlooked—Pennsylvania’s mobile home owners. Often stigmatized, misunderstood, or politically invisible, they are among the most vulnerable to regressive taxation, and yet are left out of nearly every statewide policy conversation about affordability and fairness. It’s time that changed.
In Pennsylvania, mobile homes occupy a legal gray area. Though they are titled through PennDOT like vehicles, many counties—including those across Chester County—tax them as real estate. This means that even when a mobile home is aging or depreciating, the property tax bill often remains tethered to its original purchase price, not its current, much lower value. For residents already on the margins—many of whom are elderly, disabled, or low-income—this can be the tipping point between stability and financial distress.
Here in Chester County, the United Way recognized this injustice and took action. In partnership with Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the organization launched the Mobile Home Tax Reassessment Program, which guides residents through the legal process of reassessing their mobile home’s value to reflect reality—not inflated, outdated figures.
The results speak volumes. Since its inception in 2019, the program has helped over 1,052 residents, collectively saving more than $10 million in property taxes over the next decade. On average, participants have seen an annual savings of $882—a life-changing figure for someone on a fixed income. One homeowner who joined the program watched her tax bill shrink from $1,200 to $400 a year. And for every success story, there are dozens more who still don’t know relief is possible.
But local charity is not a substitute for statewide justice. Programs like this shouldn’t be rare exceptions—they should be the rule. We need statewide reassessment reform that:
- Automatically depreciates mobile homes over time for tax purposes, as is standard for vehicles and manufactured housing in many other states;
- Ensures mobile home residents are not taxed like real estate owners unless their home is permanently affixed to land they own;
- Establishes clear legal standards and transparency for how counties assess these unique properties.
Pennsylvania is facing an affordable housing crisis, and mobile homes—often the last form of unsubsidized affordable housing left—are a crucial part of the solution. Yet instead of being protected, mobile home owners are too often overtaxed, underrepresented, and systematically forgotten.
If Chester County can lead by example, so can the rest of the Commonwealth. It’s time for Harrisburg to recognize the reality mobile home residents live with—and to build policy that reflects fairness, dignity, and common sense.
Because equity doesn’t just mean building more housing. It means treating all homeowners, regardless of what their roof is made of, with equal respect.
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