Century Mobile Home Park

San Luis Valley Housing Coalition (SLVHC) is the housing nonprofit of Alamosa and the surrounding San Luis Valley. In the past, it created homeownership opportunities, offered home rehabilitation, and expanded into USDA rentals, assisted housing and loan programs. When the Mobile Home Park Act was amended in 2019, the state Division of Housing reached out and asked Executive Director Dawn Melgares if her agency could be the primary resource center for the area, since mobile home park tenants were already using SLVHC for assistance.

When the new law was being enacted, a major Alamosa mobile home park went on the market. The seller felt he was “grandfathered in,” since he listed the park for sale before the act went into effect and violated residents’ rights under the act. SLVHC used a grant to finance educating residents and file grievances. The park was sold in 40 days, but residents won their grievances and the seller had to pay residents a fee for those violations.

The Mobile Home Park Act had been amended by the time another MHP, Century Mobile Home Park in Alamosa, went on the market. Century consists of 185 lots, including 129 occupied homes. Its residents are largely farm workers and many speak Spanish or the Mayan language Q’anjob’al as their first languages. The owners were an elderly couple from Las Vegas who had lived at the park in the long-ago past. For about the last decade, they had put little maintenance into the park. A
California corporation that owns many parks was poised to buy Century. That company had been the successful purchaser of the park previously mentioned and one in Monte Vista.

SLVHC found out the park was for sale within the first week, started meeting with residents, and got several nonprofits involved to help. But there simply wasn’t enough time to organize the residents, so the residents asked SLVHC to assume their “opportunity to purchase.” SLVHC started working with residents in August 2022 and purchased the park in December 2022.

SLVHC paid $7 million for the park, financed with loans from First Southwest Bank, which is a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), and the Impact Development Fund, also a CDFI lender. The City of Alamosa gave the agency a $60,000 general loan to cover costs of getting started.

The state timeline for purchase was not long enough, but during the process of preparing for the purchase, SLVHC reached out to the state Mobile Home Park Oversight Program, which helped identify the sellers’ violations of statute. With each violation, the “clock” started over, gaining valuable additional time for SLVHC to move the process forward.

Melgares said residents of the park would not have been able to get the financing SLVHC was able to secure as an established nonprofit organization.

Melgares had been told at purchase that a sewer line had collapsed but quickly discovered that many of the sewer lines were collapsed. Sewer line repairs are project to cost $3 million. The homes electrical boxes are outdated and Xcel Energy notified SLVHC that the boxes will need to be replaced for another $2 million. Water lines on the property no longer meet code and must be replaced for another $1.5 million. Ideally, utility lines should be repaired at the same time.

Melgares estimates the necessary renovations will cost as much as the park itself about $7 million. Meanwhile, SLVHC has put $160,000 into repairing unsafe homes, removing mold, repairing roof leaks, replacing windows, and other important repairs, and doing small repairs on the sewer system to help residents until the lines can be replaced. Though there is room for additional tenants, new tenants cannot move in until the sewer and water lines are repaired. The agency must also finance outdoor upkeep and removal of trash and large abandoned objects that tenants did not have means to remove. The hardest part to find funding so far has been the removal of uninhabitable homes, which required $5,000 each to take to the dump while following guidelines for assumed asbestos contamination.

SLVHC has not raised rents since taking over Century but has had to raise utility fees as those have increased. Melgares is seeking a USDA loan to cover some of the infrastructure repairs but may still have to raise rent slightly to qualify for the loan. Once the repairs are complete and new tenants move in, this will increase revenues. She anticipates it will take two to five years to complete the repairs. By the time infrastructure repairs are made, the park could be sold to residents, if residents decide they want to pursue that option.

SLVHC has been asked to consider buying other mobile home parks but can’t consider doing so until it solves Century’s expensive problems. Some private park owners with infrastructure problems have said they will have to shut down their parks if they cannot get assistance, but they do not qualify for governmental or nonprofit grants and loans. Their tenants would lose not only their lot spaces, but likely their mobile homes as well, since moving mobile homes is costly ($5,000-$10,000 for a single-wide mobile home) and because of age requirements for moving, (single-wide mobile homes cannot be more than 15 years old if being moved to private land).

Melgares and another SLVHC staff member grew up in two of the Alamosa mobile home parks with questionable futures. “We have a soft spot for them; they were our homes,” she said. “We know how important they are to these communities and the people who live in them. We have to try to save them.”