The war over mobile homes in Richmond appears to have ended in a truce.

Under a settlement approved Monday in federal court, the City of Richmond has agreed to modify an aggressive code enforcement program that led to the condemnation of dozens of mobile homes in the past three years, displacing mostly Latino families.

The agreement affects 33 current and former residents of Rudd’s Trailer Park and Mobile Towne in South Side who had accused the city of housing discrimination in the push to force improvements to their aging mobile homes and those of hundreds of other owners who live in seven other mobile home parks in the city.

“With the agreement, the city acknowledges that mobile homes play an important role in the affordable housing supply in Richmond,” said Phil Storey, lead attorney for the Legal Aid Justice Center, which took on the case as part of a coalition of nonprofits that rallied to support the city’s mobile home residents.

Richmond Building Commissioner Douglas H. Murrow also was supportive.

Responding to a Free Press query, he stated Tuesday, “We are on track with assuring through the settlement and good code enforcement that the citizens who reside in all of Richmond's mobile home parks will have safe dwellings and neighborhoods.

“The area inspectors for the mobile home parks will continue to monitor the conditions in the parks as they currently do in any area of the city,” he stated, indicating the agreement would not stop the city from enforcing its maintenance code or from condemning unfit mobile homes.

However, he stated that he and his staff would “look at any future concerns on a case-by-case basis, being sensitive and flexible with the residents, without sacrificing critical health and safety needs. As with all citizens, city staff will provide recommendations for how (mobile home residents) can contact engineers and tradesmen as required, to provide affordable assistance with any issue that they might have.”

Mr. Storey said the deal resulted from months of talks to address the concerns on both sides. He also praised Mark Rubin and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for Consensus Building for mediating the agreement.

Under the deal, the city will pay a nominal $25,000 to the suing residents, Mr. Storey said.

The city also is to create a $30,000 fund to assist residents to pay for repairs that were the target of the code enforcement action, with $15,000 coming from taxpayers and the rest from a private donation.

The city also agreed to work with a nonprofit partner to assist residents in the nine mobile home parks to address maintenance code violations, Mr. Storey said. The partner has yet to be selected, but the hope is that it will also find additional dollars for the city fund.

Also, the city agreed to drop its resistance to providing notices of code violations and appeal forms in Spanish and also to ensure better communications with people who do not speak English. In addition, the city agreed to train building inspectors and other code enforcement officials on the Fair Housing Act to avoid future conflicts, Mr. Storey said.

In addition, he said Mr. Murrow no longer will require mobile home residents to pay for high-priced engineering plans in order to replace windows or make other common structural repairs. The previous insistence that residents hire engineers pushed the cost of repairs out of reach for most residents and ensured the repairs were not made.

Also, the push to force mobile home owners to install expensive central heating in older homes also is being dropped, Mr. Storey said. He said the Legal Aid Justice Center won an appeal of the city’s interpretation of the building code that will allow the use of space heaters.

“This settlement is a positive outcome for our clients and for all mobile home park residents in the City of Richmond,” said Marie Diveley, senior counsel for Crowell & Moring LLP, which represented the residents without charge as did the Legal Aid Justice Center.

Mobile home parks became a target for code enforcement in 2012 after inspectors began noticing that residents were building onto homes without obtaining required permits.

City Councilwoman Reva Trammell raised concerns about the condition of the homes, particularly in Rudd’s at 2911 Jefferson Davis Highway, and inspections began turning up problems, such as aging electrical connections.

According to Mr. Storey, at least half of the 106 homes in Rudd’s were condemned. The beleaguered owner sold the property. At Mobile Towne at Midlothian Turnpike and Belt Boulevard, about 50 of the residents received citations for building code violations.