Residents of another of the Roaring Fork Valley’s largest mobile home parks (MHPs) are on the verge of achieving something that seemed impossible four months ago.
With word coming June 10 that the Colorado Health Foundation awarded a $4.5 million grant toward the $25 million effort to purchase the 98-home Cavern Springs Mobile Home Park, the residents’ cooperative, organized as the Sopris Mountain Collective, were able to beat a June 13 deadline to make an offer on the property.
The grant brings the total subsidy raised to $11.1 million, just $1.9 million shy of the $13 million necessary to supplement a $12 million loan that the residents would assume, the collective announced last week.
As of Tuesday, the cooperative’s board of directors remained in negotiations with the park’s corporate owners, Maryland-based Horizon Land Co., to seal the deal, said cooperative Vice President and 37-year park resident Monica Muniz.
If successful, it would represent the fourth park in the Valley to transition to resident ownership in the past year.
“When we first started on this journey, people looked at us like we were crazy,” board member Maria Judith Alvarez said of the 120-day time period afforded by Colorado state law for residents to put together a purchase offer when their MHPs go on the market.
Two other parks, the Mountain Valley MHP in Carbondale and the Aspen-Basalt MHP in Basalt, had just gone through the same process, working with the same lending and community organizing partners, to successfully place those properties under resident ownership.
A third, the Mountain MHP in West Glenwood, also became a resident-owned community last year, thanks to support from the City of Glenwood Springs’ affordable housing fund and the Boulder-based nonprofit Thistle ROC, which works with mobile home residents to secure funding to buy their parks.
Though residents of MHPs usually own their homes, they pay rent to a private landlord for the land underneath them, leaving them vulnerable when those properties go up for sale.
Because resources had been exhausted on the previous three efforts and others across Colorado, residents of Cavern Springs were told that their effort would be a stretch.
“Many people would have given up, but we didn’t give up, and this gift is proof that our fight was worth it,” Alvarez said of the Health Foundation grant.
Instead of throwing their hands up, the Cavern Springs cooperative built on the momentum gained with those prior successes.
“We learned that it’s possible, but that it also takes a strong will and determination that us gals on the board have,” Muniz said in an interview before the grant was announced. “The residents here are a big part of the workforce in this Valley, so it’s a real win-win in the big picture.”
The residents are up against a Texas-based private investment group that’s also put a bid in to buy the property, if the residents were unable to come up with the funding within the allotted timeframe.
That same investment group has purchased other parks in neighboring states, and proceeded to raise lot rents to the point that residents could no longer afford them, Muniz said.
“At the end of the day, these [private investors] don’t care about us, they care about making money,” she said. “We have the
chance to make sure they don’t come into our community.”
Tight community
Cavern Springs, located between Glenwood Springs and Carbondale just west of the Colorado Mountain College intersection on Highway 82, is home to about 350 residents. They include construction and service workers, veterans, young families with children attending nearby Riverview School and Glenwood Springs High School, and many seniors.
People like Debbie and Byron King, who relocated to Cavern Springs in 2015 after having raised their family outside of Carbondale and desiring to downsize in retirement.
“We had a large property and didn’t want to have to maintain the acreage anymore because it was just getting to be too much,” Debbie said.
Two of their grown children and their families also live at Cavern Springs, so it’s convenient to spend time with the grandchildren.
“We’re all close by now and able to take care of each other, so it’s worked out perfectly,” she added. “And our plan when we moved here was that this was going to be our last home.”
Byron said it had occurred to him that the park could eventually be sold at some point, with no guarantee that it would even continue to be a MHP.
“MHPs have proven over the years to be a good investment, but the land does go up in value,” he said, adding those pressures also make it valuable for redevelopment, especially as neighboring properties do so.
“So, we came in with our eyes open to that,” he said.
Marty Klotz has lived at Cavern Springs since 2009, and also said he found it to be an ideal situation as a regular up-valley commuter and worker.
“This is probably the largest MHP in this part of the valley, and I see every day how much the people who live here contribute to the Valley’s economy,” he said. “If anything were to happen, that’s a lot of people and families being displaced, and the trickle down effect of that happening would be pretty significant.”
Alvarez has been living and raising her son at Cavern Springs for five years.
“It is the first time since arriving in the United States that I have had stable housing,” she said. “It fills me with great pride and satisfaction to be able to provide a roof and protection for my son.”
Park resident Enedina Garcia organized five community fundraisers to supplement the land purchase efforts, including a homemade tamale sale that raised $6,000.
“That is what this community does — we take care of each other,” she said.
Valleywide effort
Recognizing that larger community impact and assisting the resident cooperative in raising public subsidies and steering private fundraising for the Cavern Springs cooperative have been the intergovernmental nonprofit organization West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition and two other nonprofit organizations for which housing stability is a focus, Mountain Voices Project and the Aspen Community Foundation Housing Justice Fund.
To date, local governments — including the City of Aspen ($2 million), the Town of Snowmass Village ($1 million), the Town of Carbondale ($500,000), Pitkin County ($1.5 million) and the City of Glenwood Springs ($500,000) — have contributed more than $5.5 million to the campaign. In exchange, long-term affordable housing covenants would be placed on the Cavern Springs property to ensure lot rents remain affordable.
Another $1.1 million has been raised through private contributions made through the Housing Justice Fund.
The additional $1.9 million that’s needed would primarily go to fund capital improvements to the park’s streets, water and sewer infrastructure, as well as the creation of a resident-led rental assistance program.
Fundraising is to continue through Sept. 30 to support those ongoing efforts.
Future leverage
A key component of the Cavern Springs deal has been to assess infrastructure needs and identify the cost to make necessary improvements once the park is in the residents’ hands.
New state legislation that was signed by Governor Jared Polis earlier this month, and which will go into effect come January 2027, will assist park residents in making those determinations as part of sales negotiations.
HB26-1224 strengthens Colorado’s Mobile Home Park Act by ensuring that residents have an extra 90 days to conduct inspections once they’ve negotiated a purchase deal in good faith.
It requires a landlord to justify the list price of the property, the age and history of major infrastructure on the property, rental information and operating expenses.
Upon request, the bill would also require a landlord to disclose any financial ties to potential buyers of the property and any agreements between the landlord and the potential buyer.
And it bans anti-competitive practices that inflate prices above market value, which makes it harder for residents to purchase their MHPs.