Resident Cooperative

When a privately owned mobile home park comes up for sale, residents can organize into a co-op or similar governing body and purchase the park, usually by obtaining several grants and loans from public and private sources.

Mobile home park residents can apply for technical assistance to become a Resident-Owned Community through ROC USA. In Colorado, the regional ROC provider is Thistle Community Housing,

a nonprofit organization based in Boulder and a member of the NeighborWorks Network. (See more about ROC USA, which has a lending arm, under “Sources of Funding.”) Only mobile home parks with 25 or more lots are eligible to become Resident-Owned Communities through ROC USA, based on the organization’s assessment that small communities may not have the capacity to manage long-term. Some communities with serious infrastructure problems also are not eligible for assistance from ROC USA because of feasibility. According to ROC USA, in order to develop a successful Resident-Owned Community, 75-80% of residents must be engaged in the process. Nine Resident-Owned Communities are currently operating in Colorado. Approximately 300 official Resident-Owned Communities are operating in the U.S. According to one estimate, the country has another 700 or so mobile home parks owned by a resident cooperative.

Nonprofit Ownership

In recent years, numerous Colorado mobile home parks have been purchased by local nonprofit agencies. In some cases, the nonprofit agencies have been nongovernmental housing alliances and

coalitions or Community Land Trusts. Nonprofits can leverage their existing operating capacity to build capital stack to purchase and manage; and funders may be more likely to offer grants and loans to a known entity with a track record of fiscal responsibility. Community Land Trusts traditionally buy land that is then leased long-term to homeowners. While mobile home park preservation has not generally been part of the mission of most land trusts, Elevation Community Land Trust is active in preservation in Durango. (See “Successful Preservation Efforts.”)

When nonprofits purchase a mobile home park, they may be intending to own the mobile home park long-term, or may be effecting the purchase with the intent of selling the park to the residents as soon as that is feasible and if residents are willing to make the shift to ownership.

Housing Authority Ownership

Housing authorities are governmental or quasi-governmental entities usually attached to local jurisdictions (municipal, county) that acquire, construct, own, and manage affordable rental units for people who meet certain low-income qualifications. Housing authorities can acquire funding from state and federal sources, including Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 8 vouchers, which pay rent for privately owned housing for elderly, disabled, and low-income people who earn less than 50% of the Area Median Income. Along with local jurisdictions, housing authorities can purchase mobile home parks when park residents assign their “opportunity to purchase” to them.

Local Government Ownership

Municipalities and counties can purchase mobile home parks. Local governments have access to some funding that is not available to nonprofits, which facilitates purchases.

Private, For-Profit Ownership

The most traditional model of park ownership is private for-profit ownership. This form of ownership doesn’t guarantee that affordability is preserved, or that park residents have a meaningful voice, but it also doesn’t prohibit those objectives. Given the large number of mobile home parks in Colorado and the relatively small capacity of the nonprofit/local government sector, private for-profit ownership should be part of the discussions around community affordability and preservation.

Combined Investor & Resident Purchase

Dan Hunt, a park resident and board member who participated in the ROC purchase of Animas Mobile Home Park in 2021, said that when a nonprofit buys a park and later sells it to residents, the cost of the sale in interest, etc., will be passed on to residents. To avoid such a “second sale,” there may be another potential model in which an investor buys the park, with residents earning equity over time (such as annually or after several years), so that the residents eventually own the park.

Such a scenario might include the investor putting in two-thirds of the money and residents putting in one-third, possibly in a forgivable loan. This could help residents of small parks or who face major infrastructure improvements to eventually become owners.