A company that manages mobile home parks in Tucson and across the U.S. is arguing it is not legally required to update its electrical systems from 1962 for manufactured home residents at a park in Tucson today.
That’s according to the latest legal volley between BoaVida Communities, the property management company under an investment firm that invests in mobile home park properties across the country, and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
BoaVida has taken the first step in a possible countersuit: filing a notice of claim, a legal effort to resolve a disagreement before a lawsuit is filed, to the Attorney General’s Office.
Mayes sued BoaVida last summer for failing to inform residents at Tucson’s Redwood Mobile Home Park that the electrical system in the park was “extremely dangerous, unreliable, and overloaded.” The suit came after ongoing electricity outages last summer amid a deadly heat wave.
The lawsuit, now in the evidence-gathering phase, marked an escalation in how Arizona public officials have engaged with utility issues in manufactured home communities where elderly residents and low-income families are uniquely in peril from electricity outages during the summer.
In the notice of claim, dated Jan, 26, attorneys representing BoaVida argue that the Attorney General’s Office falsely sued them for violation of the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act. They also argue the Arizona Mobile Home Landlord Tenant Act and petitions to the Arizona Department Of Housing offer residents a path to redress for issues with management.
There is no requirement to upgrade the electric allowance of the park, the notice says, which was built before the National Electrical Code adopted standard for mobile homes in 1965.
“The Park’s electrical infrastructure is old and might be considered out of compliance using today’s standards, but considering the Park’s construction in 1962 using the 1959 National Electrical Code as its design reference, there’s nothing that can be considered as poor craftsmanship or out of code compliance for its time,” the notice says. “There is nothing inherently dangerous with the electrical system while being used as designed.”
Electricity outages at the park were caused by residents using equipment that required more than the 50 amps per lot the system was able to carry, the notice of claim alleged.
Upgrading the park’s electrical system would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Nothing in the law, or with respect to the tenants’ lease agreements, would require Redwood MHP to do this,” it says. The park is asking for damages of $2.5 million to come to an agreement before filing the claim.
BoaVida owns six parks in Arizona, including Redwood.
The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on pending litigation.
Mark Kear, a professor at the University of Arizona who has studied how manufactured home residents cope with extreme heat, said access to adequate cooling in mobile homes can be a matter of life or death.
Arguing that residents should accept electricity standards from the 1960s in their homes “is basically going to consign folks to thermal insecurity, or an environment that is too hot for many of them,” he said, speaking in a personal capacity. “It’s a shocking argument to be making because it basically implies that today’s housing standards should be based on the standards that existed whenever that housing happened to be constructed.”
Tucson is considered one of the fastest-warming cities in the country, according to a heat resolution adopted by the city of Tucson. In Pima County, 30% of heat deaths between May 2023 and September 2024 that took place indoors were in mobile homes or RVs. The housing represents about 10% of housing in the county.
The park agreed to substantial repairs to their electrical system following the preliminary injunction hearing, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said in response to a request for an update on the lawsuit. Court records show the agreement avoided moving forward with the injunction.
A representative from BoaVida noted the park was repairing some of the electricity they said had been modified to draw more than 50 amps and in some cases were installing new 50 amp systems.
“Codes are updated every few years, but that does not require everybody to modify their homes or offices each year to meet those new codes. So we have to consider that tenants throughout the country living in 50 amp parks for decades still do, and do so successfully,” said Aric Resnick of BoaVida. “Newer homes have better insulation, newer appliances are more efficient. But to say that we are causing ‘thermal insecurity’ is no more valid today than 10, 40 or 60 years ago.”
Resnick said, for a home less than 500 square feet, 50 amps would be sufficient for cooling but that it could still impact the electricity to run multiple appliances at once.
“That doesn’t mean that you can run a washer and the dryer and stove and hairdryer and TVs and computers all at the same time, just like any home with too many things plugged in at the same time,” he said, also noting that newer homes are better insulated.
Read the notice of claim here:
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