Manufactured housing is the largest unsubsidized source of affordable housing and provides homes to seniors on fixed incomes, low-income families, people with disabilities, veterans, immigrants, and others in need of low-cost housing. Here are some excerpts from the grant application:Īn important aspect of housing options in Jeffco is preservation of existing affordable housing. ![]() We will also be working at parks in Arvada and probably Lakewood. We are just getting started and will be working at some mobile home parks in the Golden area, including Mountainside Estates, Golden Terrace, and Golden Hills. The main organizations for the grant are Together Colorado, 9to5 Colorado, and the Colorado Coalition of Manufactured Home Owners (CoCoMHO). Golden United and the Jefferson Unitarian Church Community Action Network (JUC CAN) are collaborators on a 2-year grant made possible by the Community First Foundation to engage and inform residents of manufactured housing communities in Jefferson County about new statewide laws that provide protections for residents of mobile home parks. One of the leaders of that effort within Golden United, Kathy Smith (no relation), sent me a super-informative email with the following information, much of which is reflected in my published column.Īlso, the Colorado Sun did a series titled “Parked.” They meet monthly on the first Wednesday of the month. While mobile home park residents may be reluctant to speak up for themselves, they have allies among progressives within the larger community, notably the Golden United Housing Task Force. I was educated (in less than 20 minutes!) on this topic by a segment by John Oliver on his program “Last Week Tonight.” Do watch it using the link above. And you thought HOAs were difficult! One resident of a Golden mobile home park who has been outspoken told me that the number of “rule notifications” – known among residents as “nastygrams” – has exploded as a result of speaking up. Don’t pay the full rent, and you’ll be evicted. If you get on the wrong side of management, you face increased enforcement and fines which are added to rent. The property tax on those 11 listings ranged from $142 to $803 per year.Īlthough last year’s legislation created a complaint resolution process for mobile home owners, it is not utilized as much as it could be, because residents are fearful of retaliation by management. Mobile homes are titled with the Department of Motor Vehicles, and yet they are taxed as “real property” by the county assessor rather than via “ownership tax” from the DMV, as with automobiles. Many of the homes couldn’t be sold for that much and are depreciating every year, unlike “regular” homes, which appreciate.Ī mobile home, by the way, is not real estate and can only be on the MLS if it is on owned land or has a land lease. Rents range from a low of $7,500 to a high of $10,920 per year. Now that mobile homes can be listed in the MLS, I found 11 such homes in the metro area that are active, pending or have closed in the past 6 months. Now they have 10 days to cure a notice of rent past due and then have 30 days to vacate, but the problem persists - you either pay or you surrender ownership of your home. Until the passage of HB19-1309 by the Colorado General Assembly last May, which strengthened the Mobile Home Park Act, a homeowner (who the courts treat as a tenant) had 48 hours to vacate for non-payment of rent, and if they left the home in place, it became the property of the park owners. They can increase the rent as much and as often as they want and the owner has to pay it or be evicted. Because it is financially prohibitive to move a mobile home, and you can only move it to another park, the park owner has the home owner over a barrel. Increasingly, mobile home parks are owned by big national corporations whose only interest is maximizing profit. I was told that zoning laws in Jefferson County (and probably elsewhere) don’t allow a mobile home not in a mobile home park. Mobile home owners pay upwards of $100,000 for their homes (mostly pre-owned), but they have to rent lot space in a park. If our goal as a society is to preserve and expand affordable housing, we must protect and even expand mobile home ownership. More than 100,000 people live in over 900 mobile home parks across Colorado. ![]() Five mobile home parks are within two miles of our Golden real estate office. You see them in rural and, as workforce housing, near resort communities, but you also see them in the Denver metro area. Mobile or “manufactured” homes are the original and enduring form of affordable housing.
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