[As gentrification sweeps the West, investors are buying up mobile
home parks. Residents of this Colorado park got together and bought it
themselves.]
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TRAILER PARK RESIDENTS TAKE ON VENTURE CAPITALISTS—AND WIN  
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Joseph Bullington
June 3, 2022
In These Times - Rural
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_ As gentrification sweeps the West, investors are buying up mobile
home parks. Residents of this Colorado park got together and bought it
themselves. _

Alejandra Chavez rallies residents of Westside Mobile Home Park in
Durango, Colo., during their March campaign to buy the land under
their homes. , Photo courtesy of Westside Mobile Home Park Cooperative


 

DURANGO, COLO. — On a cold January day at the height of ski
season, as tourists check into Durango’s resort hotels and wealthy
vacationers roll suitcases into their second homes, Alejandra Chavez
pulls away from her single wide trailer on the outskirts of town and
drives the two-lane road south to look for a new place to live in New
Mexico. Chavez dreads the prospect of making this same
1.5‑hour-drive, back and forth, every day, but she sees few options.
Her work is in Durango, but Durango, it seems, may no longer have
a home for her. 

Chavez, 30, moved to the area 18 years ago to join her parents, who
fled economic desolation in Mexico and found work in Durango. In 2008,
the family bought their trailer in Westside Mobile Home Park for
$12,000. It was in rough shape, but Chavez’s father, who owns
a construction company, spent years and some $20,000 renovating it
into a comfortable home. Westside, Chavez says, has been a good
place to live — a neighborhood where Latino, Native American and
white families raise their kids together. 

As is common in trailer parks, however, the Chavezes and most of their
neighbors own their homes but not the land beneath them. In December
2021, they received notice
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that the park was for sale. Chavez pictured their homes being torn
down to make way for a hotel, a gas station or some other amenity
for ski resort-goers. Or their homes might simply become unaffordable:
In recent years, an inrush of tourists, remote workers and investors
has driven land and housing prices out of control
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in Durango and across the West. The park’s prospective buyer,
Harmony Communities [[link removed]], raised lot
rents by 50 percent
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when it bought a trailer park in Golden, Colo., in 2021.

Chavez and the other Westside residents saw one other
option — one way to turn private tragedy into collective
victory. On Jan. 14, residents formed a cooperative
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elected representatives (including Chavez to the role of vice
president), and voted to try to buy the park themselves.

The $5.46 million
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asking price was daunting, but residents knew the cost of failure.
Chavez has friends who pile in six to a car and drive 2.5‑hour
commutes to Durango from cheaper towns in New Mexico, casualties of
this new, outdoorsy form of gentrification.

The land rush has not spared mobile home parks, which speculators buy
up as investment properties
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Two such investors even started ​“Mobile Home University
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online courses in how to do it. In a blog post titled ​“How to
Make Huge Returns on Mobile Home Parks,” MHU co-founder Frank Rolfe
sums up
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the strategy: ​“It costs $3,000 to move a mobile home.… As
a result, tenants cannot leave when you raise their rents.”

Thanks to a new Colorado law, however, IQ Mobile Home Parks
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Westside, had to give residents notice of its intent to sell and
90 days to make their own offer. And Westside residents had a model:
In June 2021, residents of Animas View Mobile Home Park
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with guidance from ROC USA [[link removed]], a program that
connects trailer park residents to financing so they can buy and run
their parks cooperatively. The Animas View website lists some of the
benefits of self-ownership: ​“There is no profit margin in your
rent” and ​“no commercial owner who can decide to close
the community.”

On March 15, with Denver-based Elevation Community Land Trust
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Westside residents made an offer at asking price, contingent on
financing. IQ rejected it in favor of Harmony’s cash offer, but gave
residents a week to come up with a cash offer of their own,
according to Stefka Fanchi, president and CEO of ECLT. Residents
launched a GoFundMe and hosted a fundraising dinner, bringing in
nearly $50,000 in a few days. La Plata County, the Colorado Impact
Development Fund [[link removed]], the Local First Foundation
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grants to cover the rest. On March 31, after what Fanchi called
​“a miraculous act of financial gymnastics,” IQ accepted
the offer.

Michael Peirce thinks it shouldn’t take a miracle for residents to
be able to buy their own parks. Peirce is project manager for the
Colorado Coalition of Manufactured Home Owners
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(CoCoMHO) and president of the resident co-op that bought
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Sans Souci park outside Boulder in June 2021. But such successes are
the exception: Of the 68 parks that have sold since Colorado’s
opportunity-to-purchase program took effect in 2020, only four
(including Westside) have been successfully purchased by residents. To
lower the barriers, CoCoMHO is supporting a bill
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that would extend the offer timeline to 180 days and impose penalties
on owners who don’t negotiate in good faith.

In the meantime, Chavez offers this encouragement to other trailer
park residents interested in buying their parks: ​“Look out for
each other. Ask your community for help. If we did it, I’m pretty
sure others can.”

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Joseph Bullington [[link removed]]
grew up in the Smith River watershed near White Sulphur Springs,
Montana. He is the editor of Rural America In These Times.

* Westside Trailer Park Victory; Resident Owned Communities;
Cooperatives;
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