Earlier this summer, residents of Meadowood Village Mobile Home Park in Littleton celebrated their successful bid to purchase their community from an out-of-state investor. Although they still need nearly $4 million to finalize the deal, they are steadily moving closer to becoming a resident-owned community.
Joyce Tanner and her neighbors at a Golden mobile home park are all too familiar with the range of emotions that accompany such an ambitious endeavor.
Tanner — a self-employed single mother of three — and her neighbors at Golden Hills Mobile Home Park in Golden just celebrated their first anniversary as a resident-owned community (ROC) in July, following multiple attempts to buy their park from California-based Harmony Communities.
A ROC is a formalized community of manufactured homes owned by a cooperative of homeowners who live in the park, rather than an outside investor.
In 2021, the modest 39-unit mobile home park at 215 Cheyenne Street where Tanner lives was purchased from private “mom and pop” owners by Harmony Communities for approximately $3.8 million. The investors wasted little time raising lot rents by as much as 50% across the board.
Tanner, a longtime resident and the co-op president of Golden Hills, recalls the experience of organizing the purchase from the large corporate investor as not just overwhelming but “completely numbing.”
However, she said that experience was not nearly as numbing as what the alternative would have been.
It’s less about mobility and more about affordability
Manufactured home dwellers are often depicted in a less-than-flattering light, fighting decades-old socioeconomic stigmas. However, according to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs , manufactured homes are a key part of the solution to Colorado’s affordable housing crisis. At a fraction of the average cost per-square-foot compared to site-built homes, manufactured homes are one of the country's largest sources of unsubsidized affordable housing.
However, what most don’t realize is that living in a mobile home park involves two costs — the cost of the home itself and the cost of the lot on which it sits.
In some cases, residents may own their homes outright.
In others, a rental payment or mortgage may also be involved.
Yes it’s a home with wheels, which makes it easy to assume that owners could simply move the home to a new location if the lot rent becomes intolerable.
While it sounds simple, moving a mobile home can be daunting and expensive.
Federal and local regulations impose strict standards on older mobile homes, which can complicate, or even prevent, their relocation. Many units manufactured in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s must undergo extensive scrutiny to prove their structural integrity. Even if a unit meets these regulations and can be moved, the average cost of relocating a single-wide mobile home in 2024 is approximately $9,000, according to Forbes.
That price can soar as high as $15,000, based on the age and condition of the home, not to mention any additional fees for special permits and inspections that may also be required.
So for many mobile home denizens with limited resources walking away may be the only “affordable” option.
Resident-owned communities bring hope as well as challenges
Colorado is home to 759 registered mobile home parks, according to Chynna Cowart, spokesperson for Colorado’s Department of Local Affairs, the agency that houses the state’s Mobile Home Park Oversight Program .
Cowart notes that only 24 of those registered parks are currently owned by homeowner cooperatives, non-profits, or local governments.
Resident-owned communities are favorable to those needing affordable housing as “they are not subject to market-based rent increases and there is no profit margin in monthly site fees,” according to ROC-USA, a New Hampshire-based organization that provides technical assistance and financing for mobile home parks seeking to buy and manage their communities.
A year later, Tanner will tell you the journey for the co-op has been anything but easy.
No sooner had signatures on the purchase agreement dried than the reality of becoming mobile home park owners began to set in.
Although they received financial and technical support from ROC-USA, Thistle, Golden United, and even the City of Golden, Tanner and the co-op still faced a daunting challenge. They were handed the keys to a mobile home community burdened by decades of deferred maintenance from previous park owners.
"The journey for Golden Hills residents has been an emotional roller coaster, characterized by dramatic highs and lows, moments of frustration, bursts of hope, and eventual relief," Golden United Director-at-Large, Kathy Smith said. "At times, I personally felt a deep sense of regret for raising their hopes, only to see them face setbacks."
Golden Hills residents went through four attempts and a lot of heartbreak over two years before they were successful in becoming a resident owned community.
Almost instantly, lingering infrastructure problems, budget challenges and community outreach became daily elements of Tanner’s life — who still had to maintain a full-time job to pay her lot rent and support herself and her children.
John Hoefler, a Golden Hills co-op member who lives in the mobile home his mother purchased in 1998, helped craft many of the community’s new rules and bylaws.
He said that when his mother purchased the mobile home, the lot rent was $415/month.
Sometime in 2016, Hoefler’s mother, due to declining health, moved in with one of his older sisters who could oversee her care.
“At that point, the trailer became available,” Hoefler said. “So, I just took it over.”
A self-described cynic, Hoefler said when he heard a large investment company had purchased the park from Blue Sky Communities, the “mom-and-pop” owners, he knew it was only a matter of time before the lot rent would be out of his reach.
And he was right.
In November 2021, after Harmony Communities purchased Golden Hills, residents received a notice informing them of rent increases, with Hefler's lot rent jumping to $795 and then to $995. They were told the hikes were necessary to fund infrastructure repairs and improvements.”
But when Harmony finally accepted the Golden Hills co-op offer, Hoefler said his disposition changed dramatically.
“It's like a whole new day,” he said. “My trailer is not fancy, and there’s a lot of things that need repair — and my motivation before, when the rent was just going up, wasn’t there.”
Hoefler admits he, in a sense, gave up.
He resolved not to make improvements or repairs to the home, conserving his finances until the time came when he would ultimately be forced to leave.
“But (after the purchase was completed) I found some new hope,” he said. “Now, I can do things like build a little deck in my backyard and make this place more livable.”
During the pandemic, resident William Gregg was forced to relocate several times, and to make matters worse, the company he worked for in New Mexico shut down.
Lucky enough to land a job in Golden but not lucky enough to find a place to live there, Gregg commuted daily from a basement apartment in Arvada for almost two years.
But when he woke up in the middle of the night to six inches of water surrounding his bed, he was forced to move again.
While searching for rental properties, he stumbled upon a listing for a mobile home in the Golden Hills community.
The fact the mobile home seemed within his budget was good news.
The opportunity to buy it and build equity was even better news.
Gregg secured financing and purchased the home.
But just before his scheduled move-in date, Gregg received a notice from Harmony Communities that lot rents for all new tenants would be increased by $200.
When he purchased the mobile home, the lot rent was advertised as $800.
By the time he actually moved in, it was $1,000.
“I was completely blindsided by that,” he said.
Gregg said the increase had put him beyond his budget, but he had already purchased the mobile home and “was over a barrel.”
“Around the same timeframe, I saw a documentary about a large California-based mobile home park investor and what they were doing across the country,” he said. "They were raising the rent as much as they want.”
Gregg began to worry about the possibility of another lot rent increase and the impact it would have on him and his new home.
“You know, they're legally entitled to do it,” he said, “And like their whole business model, they're just driving rent to the maximum they can and still keep the community populated.”
Gregg opted to ride the situation out as long as he could.
But then he met Tanner, who told him about the co-op effort.
She recruited him for a board position shortly before the co-op’s purchase was final.
“It was interesting to catch up on the park's history and all the attempts to make offers,” Gregg said of the first few board meetings he attended. “And just being baffled that we were making an offer at the seller’s asking price, and they just refused — probably because the nature of the co-op model is a threat to their business model.”
But the lot rent still went up
Approximately 90% of the Golden Hills Mobile Home Park has household incomes at or below 80% of AMI ($71,500 for a 2-person household), with 75% below 50% of AMI ($46,900 for a 2-person household), according to data from the City of Golden.
“I had heard comments from other residents saying, ‘I’m probably not gonna be here, this time next year, if there’s another increase,’” Gregg said.
The purchase price for Golden Hills was just over $7 million, but that only covered the cost of the property itself.
An additional $1 million was needed to cover engineering costs, deferred maintenance, infrastructure repairs, professional property management fees, snow removal, tree service, and other park operating costs.
“Some of what we need right now are repairs to the sewage and water infrastructure. We need to work on the gas system as well,” Gregg said. “That work didn’t get performed under the previous rent increase. But the community has a lot more autonomy over these purchases now.”
When co-op members voted unanimously to purchase the park, they knew it would require a rent increase.
But this time, the community voted to raise its own rent, knowing it would have more say in park rules and regulations — and the future.
Tanner credits much of the park’s success to a $2 million soft loan from the City of Golden, which helped cover the additional purchase costs.
“We still wound up having to raise lot rents to $1,092 because of the bigger price tag and the infrastructure expenses, but because the City of Golden and Jefferson County worked together, we didn't have to raise lot rents that significantly.”
"I am immensely proud of the residents for their resilience and accomplishments," Smith said. "I have witnessed their transformation from a fragmented community to a cohesive and purpose-driven group."
“What we are paying now is what’s necessary to make the ownership happen,” Gregg explained. “I have a huge amount of security knowing that with what I’m earning right now, I can pay the bills—and if I get a raise, great, but if things are stagnant career-wise, then I don’t have to sweat over having to relocate again.”
Gregg said the whole object of the co-op is to secure the property and stabilize the rent as much as possible.
Any excess that is generated, he said, goes back into amenities for the community.
A steep but promising learning curve
While it didn’t seem like it at the time, Tanner said the multiple rejections to the co-op’s offers to buy their community actually served as one of the greatest teaching tools they could have had.
“First, it forced us to get organized early,” she said. “And that helped."
Under previous Colorado law, mobile home park residents had 90 days to organize and secure financing to make an offer on their community. HB22-1287 now gives park residents up to 120 days.
Tanner jokes that when it comes to trying to buy a mobile home park, Golden Hills has had plenty of practice.
But they haven’t had much practice working with a property management company to help them handle the park's day-to-day operations, such as leases, rent collection, resident complaints, hiring contractors for snow removal and enforcing community rules.
Golden Hills has worked closely with Boulder-based Thistle , a non-profit organization that provides technical assistance and oversight for new ROCs.
“During the past year, we’re were still learning to work with the property manager," Tanner said. "And we want to be responsive to residents, especially when you may bump into them at the mailbox.”
The group hopes that by this time next year, their focus will move away from administrative concerns and more toward community-building.
"Creating a well-functioning operative is a significant achievement, and I commend both the board members and the residents for their steadfast dedication and determination," Smith said. "I was genuinely honored to be invited to their signing when they became the Golden Hills Community Cooperative, Inc. Resident-Owned Community."
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