Ishbel Dickens is a staff attorney at Columbia Legal Services. Ishbel has been an advocate for manufactured home owners for twenty years and specifically went to law school to become an even stronger advocate for people who own their homes but not the land under them. Dickens has traveled extensively throughout Washington meeting with manufactured home owners and educating them about their rights under the Manufactured/mobile Home Landlord Tenant Act (RCW 59.20) and helping them form home owners’ associations with a view to preserving their manufactured housing communities. Dickens is working with two homeowners’ associations who are in the process of purchasing their communities as cooperatives. She is also involved in policy changes at the local and state levels that will help manufactured homeowners preserve their lifestyle choice. Dickens has provided trainings both locally and nationally on manufactured housing community preservation. She had an article published in Clearinghouse Review, a national poverty law and policy journal and was awarded a WSHFC “Friend of Housing” Award in 2007. Dickens has been accepted to the Achieving Excellence program run by Harvard’s Kennedy School and she hopes to move manufactured housing in Washington to the next level as a result of her attendance in this program. Dickens welcomes calls from manufactured home owners, policy and decision-makers about ways to help maintain and preserve manufactured housing communities in Washington.

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