The mobile homes in mobile home parks were never very mobile. Wheels could be re-bolted to their axles – if the axles hadn’t been removed – and a tractor could tow them to another location, usually not far. But that could be expensive, and a mobile home’s lightweight construction might suffer.
On the plus side, mobile home ownership is home ownership. It can be decorated and enhanced and a porch, deck, sidewalk and carport added, to the owner’s content. The negatives are that they depreciate when a stick-built house doesn’t, and there is little recourse against excessive increasing space rental rates.
But they are home ownership, and more. In very recent years in communities where housing prices were climbing steeply – think Durango and other mountain towns – mobile homes were suddenly recognized for their affordability and thus their importance to the housing sector. At the same time, the corporate world discovered them: Parks are made up of rent payers with an asset who really can’t relocate.
In Colorado, when a mobile home park is placed on the market, state statute requires that renters must have a few months to organize and attempt to meet the seller’s price. Fortunately, there are national nonprofits with the expertise to walk renters through required steps, involve a lending institution and to assist to some degree with a portion of the funding, likely the down payment.
Success stories in Durango, where renters now are a part of group ownership and thus masters of their own fate, are the Animas View Park and the Westside Mobile Park.
Apache Trailer Park renters, 48 in number, ought to be as successful. That park on the west side of Durango is on the market.
But at least early on, that the park is in a federally designated flood plain – rain and snowmelt could accumulate and flow down from higher land to its west; there’s no nearby waterway – makes borrowing uninsurable. Cash would do it, but renters don’t have that; the corporate world does.
Could the federal flood plain boundaries be excessive? Were they drawn to provide for any extreme eventuality beyond what might be realistic? Yes, climate change is bringing unknowns, but to give the 48 space renters every possibility of ownership we hope that a very close look is being given to the flood plain’s outline and content. And, is there another insurance company with a mix of financial strengths that would allow it to take on greater risk and be the insurer?
The city of Durango is delivering on an aggressive low income and workforce housing initiative with new construction, but it would be very worthwhile to have the 48 Apache Trailer Park spaces in group ownership for the future. That’s home ownership.
