As Tucson faces one of its hottest Augusts, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is ordering a south side mobile home park to restore power and air conditioning, saying repeated outages put residents’ lives at risk.
Redwood Mobile Home Park, located near the Tucson airport, is owned by Redwood Thunderbird MHPS, county property records show. The company’s address is the same as the BoaVida Group, an investment firm that oversees properties across the country.
The cease-and-desist letter says Redwood’s inability to provide regular electricity to all of its residents during the summer months violates the Mobile Home Park Landlord Tenant Act, which governs the relationship between manufactured home owners and the landlords who own the land they rent.
The attorney general’s office also says that the park does not share information about any of the yearslong electrical issues, a practice that may violate the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act, which protects consumers from fraudulent business practices.
If the park doesn’t meet its obligations, litigation is a possibility, the attorney general’s office told Arizona Luminaria.
“Mobile homes heat up incredibly fast. These conditions aren’t just dangerous — they’re deadly. And I won’t stand by while landlords take advantage of mobile home tenants by failing to provide a habitable living environment,” said Mayes in a statement. “Electricity and AC are life-saving necessities in this heat, particularly for seniors and infants. Mobile home landlords must follow the law.”
Josh Court, the central region leader with BoaVida, said the park had been in touch with the attorney general’s office over the past week and inspected each space within the community. Court blamed the electrical issues on alterations made by residents.
“These alterations are causing the main fuses to trip, interrupting service for them and their neighbors,” he said in an email statement to Arizona Luminaria. “We will continue to work with licensed electricians to make any repairs or changes needed to ensure the system is being used as designed, and ensure that our residents do not experience interruptions caused by other residents tampering with [the] system.”
On July 31, Mayes issued a cease and desist letter, ordering the park to address the lack of residents’ electricity and air conditioning.
Over two weeks later the company had allegedly hired an electrician to repair the property, but those repairs had not been completed, the attorney general’s press release said. The park should also put together a plan about access to cooling centers, backup generators and vouchers for hotels in the case of electricity outages during extreme heat, according to the letter.
More info
See the suggested emergency plans from Arizona manufactured home residents and organizers on how mobile home parks can minimize the impact of electricity outages during extreme heat, and how residents can best prepare for outages
Community organizing group Poder Casas Moviles will hold several Know Your Rights presentations for manufactured home residents in August at the Southside Presbyterian Church at 317 West 23rd Street. The workshops will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 14, Aug. 21 and Aug. 28. Register here.
Read more about one Tucson park’s tragic experience during a power outage, how a broken utility bill can lead to eviction for some residents and how innovations in understanding heat deaths help underscore the risks of extreme heat in mobile homes.
That’s part of a longstanding issue in manufactured home communities.
Each summer, Arizona communities see electricity outages as summer storms batter electrical grids and extreme heat means more people are using air conditioners, which puts more strain on electric services.
Residents in mobile home parks are uniquely in peril from electricity outages during the summer: many are elderly, making them at higher risk of health impacts from extreme heat, many parks have aging infrastructure and mobile homes themselves are often difficult to adequately cool and heat quickly.
Between May 2023 and September 2024, 30% of Pima County’s indoor heat deaths took place in mobile homes, though manufactured homes only account for about 10% of homes in the region.
In the summer of 2024, a resident at Hummingbird Harvest mobile home park in Tucson died when the power was out for 11 days during extreme heat.
Tucson recorded one of its hottest August days on record this year. So far in 2025, approximately 24 heat-related deaths have occurred indoors in Pima County — in 2024, that number was 37.
The ultimate fix could come from state regulators, either consumer protection advocates like the attorney general or lawmakers who pass laws to protect residents.
In March, Mayes attended a housing justice forum held in Tucson and promised to address some of the concerns raised by mobile home residents.
“All I can promise is that I will act as quickly as I can,” said Mayes, speaking to the press after the forum. “We will take this back to the attorney general’s office.”
Mayes is a former member of the Arizona Corporation Commission. During her tenure, she focused on oversight of utilities and had power to address consumer complaints. At the April meeting, she promised to hold utility companies accountable.
“That’s not acceptable,” Mayes said. “I believe there is a massive problem in Arizona.”
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