The Roaring Fork Mobile Home Park (RFMHP) is an aptly named mobile home park just off of South Grand Avenue in Glenwood Springs. The park has 12 mobile homes and two apartments, making it smaller in comparison to others. Residents say a lot of people don’t even know it exists.
On Sept. 12, 2023, park residents received a notice of their right to buy the property, giving them 120 days to raise enough money to match the sale price. The deal never closed. Today, a Facebook Marketplace listing for the park, posted by one of its five listed owners, prices the park at $2.25 million.
Aide Gonzalez, a resident of the park, and a handful of other residents began reaching out for help, which has become a three-year effort. She tried finding financing, going to Alpine Bank to ask about a potential loan, but that didn’t lead anywhere.
They also turned to local organizations and leaders, but residents said none of those leads went anywhere, and communications eventually stopped.
“They would tell us, ‘You need to form a cooperative,’” Gonzalez said. “We would ask organizations to help us figure out how, but we were never able to do that.”
In April 2024, residents attended a Mobile Home Community Preservation event hosted by Housing Resources of Western Colorado. It was a statewide meeting held in Grand Junction, where groups actively working in mobile home preservation shared ideas. RFMHP residents attended with the expectation of finding help.
They exchanged contacts with a few organizers, but residents said their efforts again went unanswered.
Searching for help
Sourcing and acquiring funds to purchase a mobile home park in 120 days is a monumental task. The process of forming a cooperative and making an offer on a park can be long and tasking. To help other mobile home park cooperatives, local governments and nonprofits have stepped in.
One such organization is Thistle ROC, a Colorado-based nonprofit affiliated with ROC USA with the intention of helping residents of mobile home parks transition to resident-owned communities, or ROCs.
Tim Townsend, director at Thistle ROC, described how the organization approaches that work. It starts when a park resident or representative reaches out.
“When evaluating a potential resident purchase, we look at much more than whether a community can acquire a property,” Townsend said. “We evaluate long term affordability, infrastructure conditions, financing feasibility, resident interest, leadership capacity and the availability of resources needed to support the community after closing.”
If Thistle ROC discerns potential, it works alongside residents throughout the process which includes: meetings, cooperative formations, financing, negotiations and general support as residents decide whether resident ownership is right for the long-term sustainability of their community.
Of course, not every park makes it to resident ownership and not everyone qualifies for help. Purchase price, financing terms, infrastructure needs and lot-rent increases can stand in the way. That’s on top of organizing homeowners, meeting with potential funders, paperwork, legal terms and much more.
Which raises the question: Why go through any of it?
“Most of us neighbors agree: If we can stay here, it would be so much better,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve seen how they’ve helped other parks.”
An expansive need
West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition (WMRHC) works to address the housing affordability crisis in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys, from Aspen to Parachute. The organization is currently helping the Cavern Springs Mobile Home Park community pursue resident ownership. April Long, the organization’s executive director and sole employee, said she regularly gets calls from mobile home parks and other organizations trying to figure out who in their communities does what WMRHC does locally.
WMRHC helped residents of two local parks, Aspen-Basalt and Mountain Valley, make a successful purchase last year. The organization hopes to build their knowledge and experience in mobile home park preservation, and that their work can act as a blueprint for other such support groups across the state. But Long said there’s work to be done before that structure exists.
”We would love to have a better handle on what is happening, why it’s happening, which mobile home parks are at risk [and] what the tools and practices and policies [are that] we can put into place to be more proactive in the ways that we help and protect mobile home parks,” Long said. “So over the next six months … we’re going to be doing that research.”
Three years in, RFMHP residents have yet to form a cooperative. But recent outreach to new organizations and contacts has put them on track to finally start that process, though they’ve yet to reach out to WMRHC. Most recently, they opened a bank account to receive public support and are planning fundraising events.
“We don’t want anything for free,” Gonzalez stated. “We want help, but we also want to take responsibility for paying it back.”