The Rock Falls City Council unanimously approved an ordinance Tuesday aimed at cleaning up its mobile home parks.

The ordinance bans mobile homes that were manufactured more than 20 years old from the parks within city limits. It applies to all those homes even if they’ve been renovated, but does not apply to homes already within a city park, according to the ordinance.

Alderperson Violet Sobottka, also chairperson of the council’s ordinance committee, said the ordinance was written mainly to prevent mobile homes from coming to Rock Falls if they don’t comply with other municipalities’ requirements.

Dixon city code requires all homes placed in any lot within the city limits after Aug. 1, 2018, to be manufactured no more than 10 years ago. Sterling city code doesn’t have a specific age requirement for a home, but it does have several requirements related to the construction standards of the homes.

Sobottka said mobile homes manufactured over 20 years ago are typically not up to date on their wiring or other modern safety standards and they could cause the city to appear to be a neglected or run-down place.

“We don’t want anything older than this because it’s a fire hazard. It causes all these other problems,” Sobottka said.

Mobile homes can be a great option for people “because of the fact that they’re cheaper than a house...you don’t have yard maintenance and things like that,” Sobottka said. “You just have to maintain your trailer and your space.”

While there is at least one well-maintained mobile home park in Rock Falls, one example of the kind of park it doesn’t want to encourage is the one located on the west side of Route 30, Sobottka said.

The city discontinued its license to operate that park, Alderperson Marshall Doane told Shaw Local.

Doane said the city believes there are about six mobile homes there “that are completely abandoned” and about eight that are owned by somebody out of state.