Like many of his neighbors, John Sullivan looks at his Apple Tree Park and crosses the Colorado River into the small town of New Castle on the western slope and wonders about the future.
The 290-seat mobile home park where he has lived for 25 years offers one of the most picturesque settings among the fifty such parks, large and small, dotting from Aspen to Parachute.
The streets and yards are covered with mature trees to provide enough shade in the summer, and there’s a good-sized networked park where kids can play and families gather for picnics. Many spaces including the river, although with Interstate 70 and the Union Pacific Railroad. tracks just on the other side.
It’s not paradise, but in a booming real estate market like the one that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, the 63 acres of riverside assets may simply be a developer’s dream.
“This idea is in your mind. You never know, it can happen at some point. I mean, it’s going to take place somewhere else,” said Sullivan, who recently retired from his longtime maintenance assignment at Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs.
Two of his adult children also live in Apple Tree with their families, grandchildren are nearby. It’s a wonderful position to live in, especially for other people of modest means, he said.
“It would be hard to move anywhere else unless you had a lot of cash to pay for and buy something,” Sullivan said. “It’s not an option for most of us here. “
What worries Sullivan and his neighbors — corporate purchases, growing unaffordability, threat of park relocation due to redevelopment — is declining at a rapid pace, in both Roaring Fork Valley and Colorado, which has prompted elected officials to prescribe stricter policies. Network leaders.
In 2020, according to Garfield County Real Estate Transaction Records, Apple Tree Park was sold for $22. 7 million to Park City, Utah-based Investment Property Group (IPG) when the Talbott family, who have owned the park since its inception, wanted to sell.
That same year, IPG also purchased the 68-space Mountain Valley mobile home park on Highway 133 off Carbondale for $9. 5 million, about $4. 3 million more than the assets had sold two years earlier, records show.
IPG first entered the real estate market in January 2019 when it purchased the 79-space Aspen-Basalt mobile home park on Willits Lane in Basalt for $11. 2 million, according to Eagle County real estate transaction records.
The company’s portfolio now includes more than 150 homes in thirteen states, adding 114 cell home parks with more than 19,000 spaces, according to Mobile Home Park Home Owners Allegiance’s online database.
IPG advertises itself on its online page as a residential asset control company with the goal of renovating and maintaining its homes for the long term. Company officials declined to comment on the story.
This is part of a trend toward home ownership away from family caravan parks (as they were once called), built by farming and ranching families to generate additional sources of income through rents and support space staff for large public works projects around the world. mid to late twentieth century, and towards investment interests in real estate outside the state.
“It’s definitely a national trend,” said Jon Fox-Rubin, who works with the Carbondale-based Manaus Philanthropic Fund as a housing innovation allocation manager. “And, ironically, part of the federal affordable housing budget has been available for a lot of those teams of investors to come and buy cell home parks to get incredibly low interest rates on their financing. “
There are attractive long-term players, and IPG and some of the recent new players may simply be part of them, he acknowledged. However, there are rarely clauses requiring landlords to provide affordable rents or preventing them from selling land for eventual redevelopment, he said. saying.
The abandonment of local property has imposed new regulations for many park tenants, such as restricting the number of sheds and other structures they can own, making sure fences are stained and in good condition, and getting rid of unwanted cars and RVs. or locate somewhere else to buy them.
The standards are intended for the appearance of the parks. But they can be expensive, not to mention the steep prices for others who are content to survive.
“I try to stick to it and do everything I can,” said Sullivan, who had to remove two of his three sheds in a shed, where he sells firewood for the winter. Now you’ll have to buy something from off-site, for an additional fee.
“That’s how I heat my space during the winter, it’s wood,” he says.
And of course, the new regulations are accompanied by an increase in space rentals.
Sullivan said he saw rent of $80 a month for the first year with the new owner of Apple Tree, and a more modest increase last year. He will now pay $588 a month for the right to park his home, which he owns. (As with most mobile home parks, citizens own their homes but pay rent for the space. )
Through its networking efforts, local advocacy organization Voces Unidas de las Montañas learned that new tenants who bought an existing cell home or moved into a new home under the IPG were charged 50 to 60 percent more rent than long-term renters. Those with acquired rights pay.
“That’s the hard thing that a lot of those citizens are talking about to me,” said Alan Muñoz of Voces Unidas, who has helped Apple Tree citizens mobilize on issues such as compliance issues, rents and current water quality considerations in the park.
Growing up and living in Cottonwood Springs Mobile Home Park near Rifle, Muñoz said he used to hire raises, but no more than $10 or $15 a year.
“So you go from $410 to $425 a year, while some of those corporate-owned parks go from $400 to $500 or $600 in a single year,” he said. “And we don’t have any kind of law prohibiting that. “
In the face of increasing pressure on citizens of Colorado’s mobile home parks, multiple efforts are underway, both at the local level and within the state legislature, to try to keep mobile home parks as one of the last bastions of affordable housing for low-income people.
In 2021, Mountain Voices Project, a network advocacy organization introduced through Manaus, partnered with the Partners in Evaluation and Research Center (PiER) at the Kaiser Permanente Health Research Institute of Colorado to conduct a statewide assessment of the cell home park and a local case. study.
According to the final report released by PiER last summer, more than 100,000 people live in about 900 manufactured home or mobile home park communities in Colorado.
“While many citizens own their cell homes, the ability to maintain stable and affordable housing is threatened by several factors, including lack of tenant protection, overbilling, inventory maintenance, and unjustified evictions,” a summary of the report says.
Focusing on housing insecurity, they tested some of the solutions, adding the impact, if any, of the law enacted in 2019 and 2020 on park residents.
These invoices included:
The measures tasked the Colorado Department of Local Affairs’ Housing Division with implementing and enforcing new regulations for cell home parks, created the Mobile Home Parks Act’s enforcement and dispute resolution program, and gave cities the authority to enact ordinances supporting the equitable operation of cell homes. Parks.
The Buyability Act requires property owners to give 12 months before a replacement of use can occur on the property. Residents then have 120 days (the original 90-day provision of the law amended in 2022) to make an offer to acquire the property. property.
However, one of the main findings of the study is that policy implementation takes time and that language is confusing and deficient.
He also notes that citizens of mobile home parks fear retaliation if they complain about rent, regulations or conditions, making it difficult for them to organize so they can defend themselves.
While the law has signaled progress for mobile home park advocates in terms of racial justice and housing safety, there is still work to be done, the report says.
“Overall, we have observed a delay in policy deployment and implementation in the two years since [laws] were enacted,” the study concludes. “Despite new protections introduced through the policies, concerns about retaliation among citizens in the cellular housing inventory sector was a significant barrier limiting the effectiveness of policies. “
Locally, with asset values and interest rates emerging, citizens have little equipment to protect themselves against rent increases or to take ownership of their parks, Fox-Rubin and others note.
There are about 3,000 cell homes in Garfield County alone, housing between 15,000 and 20,000 people, depending on the local case included in the state assessment. Inventories through Manaus and Voces Unidas recommend that approximately one-portion of Garfield County park citizens are Latino.
The local study looked at three mobile housing parks in Garfield County: Apple Tree, Cottonwood Springs (290 spaces) and Cavern Springs (97 spaces), between Glenwood Springs and Carbondale, near the intersection of Highway 82 and Highway 154 in Garfield County.
Cottonwood Springs, which has been owned by local owners since its inception in 1969, is now registered with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office as Cottonwood Springs Holdings LLC. The price of its assets in 2023 is $14. 2 million, according to Garfield County Appraiser’s Office records. The registered agent indexed for this entity, retired Glenwood Springs attorney John Schenk, may be contacted for comment.
Cavern Springs, formerly known as H Lazy F Mobile Home Park, is now owned by Maryland-based Horizon Land Management, with an existing valuation of just $10 million, according to Garfield County Appraiser’s Office records.
In early 2021, Colorado-based Thistle ROC (Resident-Owned Communities) was concerned about trying to get citizens to buy Cavern Springs. Thistle ROC is a nonprofit organization that funds low-income resident businesses so they can acquire and improve their parks and build equity.
Cavern Springs is part of a timeshare portfolio owned by the now-defunct Strive Communities, said Andy Kadlec, who worked for Thistle ROC at the time and then chaired the Roaring Fork Community Development Corporation (RFCDC) when it was resurrected through Manaus. He is now Executive Director of the Gunnison Valley Regional Housing Authority.
Thistle was able to remove two of those homes from the portfolio and sell them to residents. “But the value in Cavern Springs is astronomical — about twice the price compared to many other parks in the portfolio,” Kadlec said.
Fox-Rubin and Kadlec stated that a smart rule of thumb regarding the cost of market position of cell home parks is approximately $100,000 per unit. In the case of Cavern Springs, this would place the cost of market position more or less at the assessed cost of the proconsistent: about $9. 7 million. But the requested value was about twice the unit cost at the time of the investigation, they said.
“I met several times with citizens, but the debt needed to buy was for offloading and would have almost tripled rents,” Kadlec said.
Garfield County asset records show that assets of approximately 14 acres were transferred from MHCO H Lazy F to Cavern Springs MHC LLC, a subsidiary of Horizon, in late March 2021. However, no document payments were recorded, which would mean a cost of sale. . The company representative who filed the application requested a statutory exemption from the payment record, said Bev Eberle, registrar of the county clerk’s office and recorder.
According to industry documents from the Colorado secretary of state, MHC’s registered agent from Cavern Springs is Maryland attorney Rikki Drykerman, who, according to her LinkedIn page, is Horizon’s general counsel. The company’s online page lists an asset portfolio of dozens of homes in several states, totaling five in the West Slope: Grand Junction, Montrose, Craig, Hayden and Glenwood Springs.
Horizon representatives declined a request for comment on the story and Drykerman may be reached for comment.
“We excel at creating and maintaining rented neighborhoods at affordable, empty and sought after prices; sometimes situated in spaces where life is high,” says the Horizon company website. “Our rented neighborhoods are manufactured home communities (MHCs) similar to classic single-family residential neighborhoods, unless the owner, and not the owner, owns the land on which the resident’s home is located.
The Cavern Springs, Apple Tree and Cottonwood case study included a survey of citizens to gauge their perceptions of the park’s status, control practices and safety, as well as their willingness to organize to protect their interests.
Most respondents said they live in their cell home park because it is the only home they can find in the domain and because the parks are sometimes quiet and close to where they want to go.
But there’s also a factor, given the strength dynamics of living in a cell home park. Also captured in the investigation:
“This high percentage of ‘uncertain’ responses highlights a theme heard by resident leaders, that other people were afraid to respond authentically for fear that the landlord would find out and affect their living situation,” the study said.
When asked if they would be interested in owning the park in cooperation with their neighbors, 68% of respondents said yes. In addition, 71% said a residents’ agreement would be helpful in addressing considerations and initiating the ownership procedure through residents.
“These percentages were highest in the recently sold Apple Tree and Cavern Springs parks (89% and above),” the study concludes. “This may simply be due to the negative reports citizens have had with new park owners and with citizens who have a higher understanding of how owning a mobile home stock can help them in some of their current challenges. “
Water quality has been a primary factor at Apple Tree Park, where the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment intervened this year, a network assembly with citizens and IPG representatives to seek solutions.
Although water quality tests conducted through CDPHE revealed that the water does not violate sanitary standards, it is discolored due to the superior iron content of the underground source. Residents say they don’t drink it and can’t wash their clothes or use them for cooking. And iron deposits also shorten the life of fixtures and appliances, resulting in costly replacements.
Cavern Springs citizens expressed similar considerations about water quality in the survey. 39% of respondents said they were unhappy with access to clean water and 42% cited water and sewer issues, fair app billing and rents as their most sensible desires in the survey. park.
Another law, the Mobile Home Parks Water Quality Act (HB 23-1257), passed this year and sponsored by Democratic state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, who represents Garfield County and the Roaring Fork Valley. Create a water testing program for cell homes. grants for parks and sanitation supplies.
It includes provisions under which a park will be a public nuisance if it does not meet verification requirements or create a water quality remediation plan when disturbances in verification results are known. In excessive cases of non-compliance, parks may even go unnoticed. to local government.
The lobby of mobile home park owners in Colorado and elsewhere in the country has opposed provisions to protect park tenants, adding eligibility criteria and attempts to control hiring. It remains to be determined whether these measures, if challenged, will be maintained in court.
One of the key policy objectives defined in the PiER study is to give mobile home park citizens the opportunity to acquire their parks before owners list them.
But this opportunity is very limited under the 2020 law, with a 120-day deadline to submit a competitive bid; confusion among park citizens about how to organize a deal that serves as a purchasing entity; difficulties in obtaining financing; and inadequate payment by landlords despite the provisions of the law, the study concludes.
The location of a park can have consequences.
In 2021, Manaus partnered with Thistle ROC to organize citizens of the 50-space Roaring Fork mobile home park near Basalt Avenue near the confluence of the Roaring Fork and Fryingpan rivers.
Fox-Rubin noted that 98 percent of citizens agreed to buy the park and that the owner was willing to sell it. But riots arose in the floodplains, affecting their ability to offload funding and would have resulted in the removal of several residential masses. Located in the floodplain.
The plan failed.
“So the bad news is that the procedure created false hopes that they will buy it,” Fox-Rubin said.
Roaring Fork Park, which straddles the border between Pitkin and Eagle counties, enjoys some level of coverage against rent increases on the Pitkin County side, an approval condition that accompanies a 1996 property rezoning, which restricts space rent increases to zero. % per year, Suzanne Wolff, Pitkin County’s director of community development, showed.
There are complaints of pressure on homeownership among citizens, including the Latino community, which makes up a significant percentage of citizens of mobile housing parks in Roaring Fork Valley and Garfield County.
United Voices President and CEO Alex Sanchez believes the resident ownership style would likely be a “false choice,” especially for ruling families in the Colorado Highlands, where real estate is incredibly expensive.
“A lot of those other people live on a very tight budget, and many are retired or elderly, some with disabilities or mobility issues and some kind of government assistance,” Sanchez said. Difficulties similar to the prestige of immigration can hamper efforts to obtain loans, he said. aggregate.
Also this year, Colorado Governor Jared Polis created the new Mobile Home Parks Acquisition Fund, which will be administered through DOLA’s Housing Division, which will generate $28 million in loans and technical assistance through 3 other entities: ROC USA, Impact Development Fund, and Colorado-based Thistle ROC. to help facilitate residents’ ownership.
But, as Sanchez points out, this total amount is less than what would be needed to buy one or two giant mobile home parks, restricting their viability to some of the smaller parks, if all the factors are put together.
Voces Unidas has been at the forefront of lobbying efforts with the Denver State Capitol to pass some of the recent cell home park laws. Sánchez pointed out that Voces was instrumental in the drafting and approval of the Buyability Laws, and fought to extend the 90-day deadline. 120-day requirement. The style can work, Sanchez said, “if we have the right mix of incentives and if we reduce the barriers. “He added that the organization is seeking to obtain more budget for the loan program to help citizens buy parks. Most likely, the next consultation will focus on adding hiring stabilization.
“We surveyed 1,500 Latino voters last year, and the vast majority of them, whether or not they live in a cell home park, supported some form of hiring or stabilization of hiring,” Sanchez said.
Efforts in the last referendum to pass such a measure — co-sponsored through Velasco — were reversed when Polis indicated he would veto the bill.
Sanchez pledged to continue, in the 2024 legislative session, with secure control of hiring as a more potent hedge than he believes the residents’ asset style can provide, saying the latter raises false hope for citizens and other unintended consequences.
But Manaus and at least a small organization of citizens of the area’s cell home park renounced the concept of ownership as a solution.
Last year, Manaus resurrected the previously dormant RFCDC and in April managed to acquire the 20-space 3-Mile mobile housing park outside Glenwood Springs for $2. 5 million. The company intends to manage the assets under the existing lease, while operating to prepare citizens to eventually acquire the land.
“While we are in the game to ensure the preservation of the community, we now fully understand the obstacles and documents that the citizens of the cell home park will have to overcome to acquire the land for their homes,” said Sydney Schalit, who runs Manaus. and the RFCDC, they said at the meeting.
“We are stronger than ever in our homeownership opportunities for residents in our valleys and on the West Slope and expect other entities like the RFCDC to step in to become interim homeowners as citizens coordinate their collective efforts,” Schalit said.
The deal was only made possible by the willingness of the former owners of 3-Mile Park (Eagle-Vail’s Krueger circle of relatives) to sell Manaus rather than accept what would likely have been a superior offer from a personal investor. .
“My father had owned the park for about 40 years and had gotten to know the other people who live there very well,” Bern Krueger said of his late father, Ben, who passed away in 2021. “When you get to know others a little bit, the willingness to allow them to stay where they are without having to move.
“When he died, we knew this was what he would do,” he added. “And we didn’t need someone to come and deport 20 families. “
At closing, the RFCDC partnered with Common Good Management, a nonprofit that works in particular to help manage network-owned mobile housing parks in Colorado, and hired Brianda Cervantes as park manager and network organizer. Cervantes was once a network liaison and organizer for the Roaring Fork School District and helped start the bilingual English-Spanish K-8 Riverview school in Glenwood Springs.
Since then, she has continued to earn as a network organizer as part of the Mountain Voices project.
“He’s been a replacement for me, of course, but I feel very supported in this role and in a position to receive a lot of information on how to get there,” Cervantes said in an interview in June. “In my first two weeks, I go to the park almost every day to see what the wishes were and meet the people. “
In late June, citizens showed their appreciation by teaming up with volunteers in Manaus for a day of clearing nets, clearing brush and removing some of the clutter that had accumulated outside their homes.
“In doing this, I know some neighbors I didn’t know before,” said Elizabeth Vega, a resident. “We build relationships and make it a better position to live in. “
Resident Felix Jimenez, who has lived at 3-Mile Park for 35 years, has been the park’s semi-official administrator for most of that time.
“It’s great to have an explanation of why and get everyone out and communicate it with others,” she said of the cleanup day.
Although citizens are still mulling over the idea of pooling their resources to buy the park, it’s the little things like running in combination to beautify things that help.
“If other people feel a little more united, we can work to make that happen,” Jimenez said.
Cervantes said it is this type of network construction that is desired first, before tackling the much larger task of organizing the acquisition of the property.
“Everyone is very excited to see the park evolve in a bigger way,” Cervantes said. “This is an example of how everyone is mobilizing towards the same purpose and contributing to the progress of this park. “
This story has been updated to explain Voces Unidas’ position on supporting residential ownership models.
Editor’s Note: Rob Pew, chairman of the Manaus board of directors, is a non-public funder of Aspen Journalism. Aspen Journalism is only for its editorial content.
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