A new state loan program could help solve another part of the complex equation for Colorado mobile home park resident groups that are looking to secure their long-term housing future, including various local efforts.
Last month, Gov. Jared Polis announced the new Mobile Home Park Resident Empowerment Program, which will provide $28 million in loans across the state to help facilitate resident ownership of parks whose landlords are willing to sell.
Overseen by the Colorado Department of Local Affairs Division of Housing/Office of Housing Finance and Sustainability, the Mobile Home Park Acquisition Fund will have three loan administrators, according to a June 8 news release from the Governor’s Office.
The fund came about as a result of Senate Bill 22-160, which established a revolving loan and grant program to provide assistance and financing to mobile home owners who are seeking to organize and purchase their mobile home parks.
The bill required the Division of Housing to contract with at least two, and not more than three, loan program administrators. Three organizations were ultimately chosen:
- Resident Owned Communities (ROC) USA Capital was allocated $12 million from the fund to provide longer-term, low-cost loan capital to finance resident acquisition of mobile home parks;
- Impact Development Fund (IDF) was awarded $11.75 million of capital from the fund to deploy through its Manufactured Home Community Finance program; and,
- Colorado-based Thistle ROC was awarded $5 million from the fund to support established resident-owned communities and others looking to become resident-owned over a five-year term, through technical assistance and rent stabilization grants.
The money is to be used to make loans to homeowner collectives, as well as to provide grant support along the way toward the goal of resident ownership.
“It’s a great start, and they have the right parties at the table to help in these efforts,” said Jon Fox-Rubin, who leads the Housing Innovation Project for Carbondale-based MANAUS.
Aleyda Vasquez, 8, carries an item to be discarded during a community cleanup day at the Three Mile Mobile Home Park near Glenwood Springs on June 25. Park residents are in the early stages of organizing to become a resident-owned community, after the nonprofit Roaring Fork Community Development Corporation purchased the park in April and is acting as the intermediary landlord. Photo by John Stroud
MANAUS, through its recently formed Roaring Fork Community Development Corporation (RFCDC), worked with IDF in particular to obtain financing to purchase the 20-unit Three Mile Mobile Home Park near Glenwood Springs, with the intent to eventually turn it over to resident ownership.
To help ease that transition, IDF pointed the RFCDC to Common Good Management, which works exclusively with collectively-owned mobile home parks in Colorado to provide management services.
“IDF was key in helping that come together for us,” Fox-Rubin said. “They have a good history in the state and know some of the nuances of mobile home park lending, which is very different from any other type of lending.”
In addition to loans for property acquisition, a Technical Assistance Grant Program was turned over to Thistle ROC to allocate money to nonprofit organizations, such as the RFCDC, to assist in the acquisition efforts.
And, a separate Stabilization Grant Program will distribute additional funds to qualifying homeowner groups to help stabilize rents during the conversion process.
“Mobile homes provide an affordable opportunity for a safe and stable home for tens of thousands of Coloradans,” Division of Housing Director Alison George said in the June release. “The opportunity for the homeowners to buy the land under their homes can protect that affordability and their interest in their homes impacting generations.”
ROC USA Capital is a national nonprofit organization that finances low-income resident corporations so they can buy and improve their parks and build equity. Since 2008, ROC has delivered over $300 million to 110 resident-owned manufactured home communities in 19 states, including Colorado.
However, as with Thistle ROC’s efforts regionally, some of the many smaller mobile home parks that dot the Roaring Fork Valley don’t qualify under the ROC model, Fox-Rubin pointed out.
Of the 54 mobile home parks stretching from the upper Roaring Fork Valley to Parachute/Battlement Mesa, 31 of the parks have fewer than 30 mobile home spaces. Many of those have fewer than 10.
On the other hand, the state program by itself, with only $23.75 million available for lending purposes, wouldn’t go very far to help resident homeowners in some of the larger parks to achieve resident ownership.
“With the scale of these funds, that’s not substantial if you look at a 200- or 300-unit mobile home park,” Fox-Rubin said.
Recent mobile home park sales in the region put the current market price tag at an average of about $100,000 per unit, he explained. For instance, the 290-unit Apple Tree Park near New Castle sold to Investment Property Group (IPG) for $22.7 million in 2020, according to Garfield County Assessor’s Office records. In Carbondale, the 68-unit Mountain Valley Mobile Home Park on Highway 133 sold that same year for $9.5 million, also to IPG.
Property values have only continued to climb since that time.
A combination of the new state loan and grant programs and the continued efforts of various nonprofit organizations could open some new opportunities for mobile home parks, large and small, Fox-Rubin said.
“Community banks aren’t going to be competitive enough right now to be affordable for the residents of these parks,” he said. “But if you have IDF as the lead lender, with government backing, and the community lenders can be secondary, it starts to become possible.”