(music playing) - There's a real demand for affordable housing.

- They're one of the lucky ones that they were able to purchase their park.

- We are buying the Westside Mobile Home-- [cheering] - Anyone looking to buy a home in Colorado knows it's hard out there.

There are some affordable options, but they come at a high cost.

Good evening.

I'm Sonia Gutierrez.

There is a sweet spot in housing, mobile homes.

But they come with a catch.

And that catch can cost you your ownership.

- It's a chance to break into home ownership.

- With an average home price of $123,000, the U.S. census says you can own a mobile home.

- One in five very low-income, first-time homeowners are buying a manufactured home.

Because where else can you buy a home for $125,000?

- That is rare in Colorado.

Ester Sullivan, an expert in mobile home parks and professor at the University of Colorado Denver, says that's because the most expensive part of buying a home is usually the land.

- That's why when you're purchasing a home in a mobile home park, you're not having to purchase the land.

You can just buy the structure.

- Often, in prime locations.

- Mm-hmm, that they could never afford to buy a house in otherwise.

- Yeah.

- Yes, absolutely.

Just because they're renting the land under their home, they're detached from so many of the real benefits of home ownership, like long-term security.

This is one of our largest sources of affordable housing at a time when we have a massive affordable housing crisis.

And yet, it's subject to all of these pressures.

And without support, it will disappear.

- To understand the pressures ester is talking about, we first need to understand the business of owning a mobile home park, the land on which these homes sit.

The same reasons why a lot of people buy mobile homes are the same reasons why a lot of them end up losing their investment.

Since Colorado started recording data on mobile homes three years ago, we've seen dozens of parks go up for sale.

Part of the appeal for investors is how little the landlord has to do.

Think of it like passive income if you don't own the structures on top of the land.

- Everything up to the home is the responsibility of the landlord.

- This cash cow, like some have called it, isn't a new business.

It's been around for decades.

Esther says it's just traditionally been more of a mom-and-pop kind of business.

- What's new is this veritable goldrush of corporate and private equity investment that we're seeing in the manufactured housing community space.

- Although their interest might feel like it's all of a sudden, Esther says it's been going on for years.

It's just more rampant recently.

- There's kind of a limited available stock.

- That's why Esther thinks we're seeing all the competition for available parks.

- The myth of manufactured housing, so-called mobile homes, is that they're mobile.

These homes are not mobile.

They're intended to be mobile once, from the factory to the site of installation.

- some of the newer mobile homes can be moved, but that can cost between $5,000 to $15,000.

And then where do you move them to?

- And that's a third major challenge.

There is such high demand for housing in these mobile home communities that it's often impossible to find an open lot to move your home.

- Basically, renters of the land are trapped.

And what a lot of big companies have found is that families are willing to do whatever it takes to try to save their home.

- Oftentimes, they'll tolerate rents, really egregious rent increases of like 50% to 60%.

But when rent hikes become just intolerable, unmanageable for residents, oftentimes, they move and they're forced to leave their home in place.

- when they do that, Esther says the mobile home can, and oftentimes does, become property of the landlord after eviction.

They can then turn around and sell to someone else and charge them rent for the land itself.

- It's just an interesting time that we're living in.

- Tawny Peyton is the executive director for the Rocky Mountain Home Association She represents landlords, sellers, mobile home park owners from across the state.

- There have been many offers made to property owners, with offers, just unsolicited offers, to purchase their property.

- Colorado has a law that gives homeowners 120 days to decide if they want to collectively purchase a land and make an offer to the park owner, a law, Tawny says, is costing sales.

- Why would anybody want to sit on an offer that requires underwriting and financing and appraisals and everything else when there's a cash offer where they can just close immediately?

Everybody has to be put in those shoes to understand the situation.

- Three to three and a half hours of time.

- Merlin Zimmet has been in those shoes.

- I thought, "well, somebody wants it.

Maybe this is a good time to let it go."

- He owns a park in Durango, Colorado.

- They came to me.

- He was in talks with Harmony communities, a big company out of California that's been buying up mobile home parks across the country.

- Well, they have a lot of money, ok?

And they think that their money can buy anything.

- When Harmony first approached him, he says the company asked him to sign an intent to sell contract.

- But there was a contingency.

In other words, all of the money that they spend on researching the sale of my property, I would owe them back.

- A floating figure, he says, that constantly changed and initially seemed to be unlimited.

- Part of it was about a $15,000 private jet flight that they took out to the Durango area to research my property and visually inspect it.

Well, I didn't ask them to fly a private jet out there.

-It's unclear if the private jet plane was paid or not.

-Negotiation got so nasty he said, it ended up turning him away from the deal.

- By the time, I got kind of pushed around and bullied and got some nasty text messages sent to me about what was going to happen to me and my park if I didn't sell to them.

I just decided to draw a line in the sand.

- Merlin ended up going under contract with an organization representing residents, which meant he owed Harmony money aside from the escrow.

Records show that two separate payments had to be made to Harmony.

-A little over $25,000 for due-diligence.

and $20,000 as a part of the Earnest money.

- So, they are making money and they didn't have to buy anything.

-We reached out to Harmony for a response... they said the money paid back to the company was money they put into escrow, essentially a deposit.

Harmony said Merlins comments were... “inaccurate and potentially defamatory.

” To other mobile home park owners in Colorado, Merlin has this message.

- Just be aware of the options that are out there in this world.

- A lesson Matt Bransfield knows well.

He has owned four mobile home parks, sold three, and his most recent sale was in Leadville.

- We would get letters in the mail pretty much every day with people that would have offers to buy it.

- Even though he had a lot of interest, he decided early on to sell to the residents.

- We view that as a very good thing for just securing that level of affordable housing, especially in a Colorado mountain town.

- He called it a win-win.

He got the money he was asking for and left the transaction knowing that the families were in good hands.

- If they truly cared about the residents' well-being post-transaction, I would say they would need to just exercise a little bit of patience.

- Behind the lucrative transactions in these mobile home parks, there are families who live here, who want to protect their dream of home ownership.

In Golden, Colorado, homeowners tried to buy the land underneath them when it went up for sale.

That sale is still costing them.

The first time I drove into Golden Hills mobile home park, right by downtown Golden, I ran into Ken Erwin.

- I'm finding as much work as I can for them to do.

- Work that Ken says he's having to look for, not to take advantage of his neighbor, but to help him make a buck to pay his increased rent.

- But we never asked anybody to leave, and we fought very hard to always keep the prices as low as possible.

- The two men know each other because Ken says he was the property manager of the mobile home park for 30 years.

But Ken was more than just a manager.

He was a friend.

- Before, when I first met him, they were literally throwing the same stick back and forth across the fence in the back, going, "that came off of your tree," "no, that came off of your tree."

Silly, petty nonsense.

And one day, I'm out there with those two, and I said, "how about I take the stick home, and it'll be mine."

- All of that came to a head when the park went up for sale.

- Arthur Erwin, Ken's neighbor, talked to us from his workplace at a Golden car dealership.

He knew that if the park was sold to one of the big companies buying up parks all over the state, rents would go up.

- Over 51% of the tenants all agreed they wanted to buy the park, so we made an offer.

- Their thought was, if they could purchase the land from underneath their homes, that would give them the stability they need.

But he says their first offer was turned down.

- We made a second offer, met with their attorneys for one meeting.

Then they turned that offer down, as well.

- Despite quickly organizing and being on track to obtain financing from Thistle Roc USA Capital, which supports resident-owned communities across the country, their efforts failed.

- So, it changed hands.

The new owners came in with a whole list of rules that kind of changed everything.

- The park sold to Harmony Communities, a company that owns dozens of parks across the country, according to their website.

Not even 60 days had gone by after the sale when Arthur says Harmony offered to sell it to residents.

This time, at a much higher price than the company had just paid for it.

- And we went ahead and made a full-price offer.

- But even then, that offer fell through.

- I think time will tell if they're serious about selling it.

If we get an opportunity and it's a fair price, fantastic.

If they choose not to sell it, they're talking about getting us to the market rate, which in Golden, I think right now, is over $1,000 a month just for the park rent.

-Right now, he says he's paying $795.

Before Harmony bought the park, his lot rent, he says, was $550.

It's an increase he can handle.

He's an HR manager for a car dealership.

But not many of his neighbors.

- Peg, do you have five minutes?

- Huh?

- Do you have five minutes?

- I can't hear.

- I know you can't.

- Back at Golden Hills... - We lived here for a long time.

- Ken flagged down Peg Strong and her son.

- Do you know anything about that skirting over there?

- He explained to the family that he had left it there because he was going to replace the old skirting so Peg didn't have to.

- We're going to replace a lot of this because the wind keeps tearing it out.

So, we're going to try and put metal on it.

- Ken knows Peg is running out of money, so he's trying to help in any way that he can.

- I retired in 2017, so i've been retired for a while now.

- Peg was planning to live here the rest of her life on her retirement.

But she wasn't planning on the rent hikes.

- Well, I was telling her, "you won't be able to live here much longer.

You'll be broke."

- Yeah, I was trying to find a place to live.

I'm not having much luck.

- From what she showed me, if she doesn't buy anything else, if their car doesn't break or her house, things like that doesn't cost her a lot of money, she might manage for 10 years, maybe, if she's terribly, terribly careful.

But that'll put her down to not having money to go out to dinner.

They're talking about starting to charge for water, sewer, and trash.

- Really?

instead of including it.

-Harmony Communities did not respond for comment on its plans to change the pricing of its rental properties.

-He's been... Later that afternoon, I met Allan.

Ken's right-hand man almost the entire time he was a property manager.

- I'll be 79.

- Oh, I thought you were going to be 80.

- Hey, let's not push it.

- Allen says he lived in the mobile home for free in exchange for work around the park.

- Well, I had this little house, and it was mine.

But now they priced me out.

- Ken says that when Harmony took over, they offered to let him stay on as property manager.

- I was going to do it for a while until they told me that I couldn't keep my maintenance man.

- that maintenance man was Allan.

Both men ended up losing their jobs at Golden Hills mobile home park.

We reached out to Harmony for a response, but didn't hear back from them in time for our broadcast.

Luckily, Ken says he has another house up in the mountains.

- "I must like him a little, Like I said, I'm letting him move to my house, so [laughing].

- Ken plans to keep working with Allan through the last of his days because, he says, "it's just the right thing to do."

Almost an hour north, in Longmont, close to 40 families fared differently during the sale of their land.

The quality of their lives is completely different.

- There are families that live with... grandparents, parents, and grandchildren.

Yes it is a very nice community.

If I eat, we all eat.

The Spanish version of the saying "if I eat, we all eat", " takes on a very real meaning here.

- People are very proud to have their gardens.

- This is the kind of place where neighbors share their food, help take care of each other's kids, truly know one another.

- There are some residents that they need help, the elder ones, to keep the backyard clean and to maintain their houses.

- There's a spirit of collaboration and family that's palpable in mobile home parks, in this place, in particular.

- This is the LMP Longmont Home Community.

- Incapsulates what it means to work together for a shared goal.

- There's not a lot of mobile home parks here in this area.

Actually, this is the only one in Longmont that is a resident-owned community.

- About three years ago, owners of these mobile homes were told the land underneath them was going up for sale.

- In order to buy the park when the park is on sale, the community needs to get together, and it has to be at least 50% plus 1% who really wanted to buy the--that they had the agreement to buy the park.

- With help from organizers like Luz Galicia, most residents agreed.

They were going to put in an offer.

They partnered with Thistle Roc USA, one of the nation's largest nonprofits, helping residents finance and run their own communities.

And on February 1, 2019, residents bought the land for $3.2 million.

- They have this, and it is a bulletin board, where they keep informed the residents.

- LMP became the second resident-owned community with the Roc model in the state.

- They're one of the luckiest ones that they were able to purchase their park.

- They didn't do it alone.

The Longmont City Council approved a $300,000 loan to help residents purchase the community.

- That's our goal this summer, is to completely finish the outside.

- These homeowners say it's all worth it.

- To move here, it was a big weight off our shoulders.

We felt like we're going to be ok. - Sandra Garcia moved in with her husband and two kids after residents took over.

- Yeah.

That's why we found this place, because we were looking for something affordable.

- Sandra lost her job when the pandemic first started.

And help came in the form of lowered rents for everyone.

And in the time you've been here, how many times have you guys raised your rent?

- Never.

I think they were supposed to lower it.

- That won't be the first time they lowered the rent.

During the pandemic, Sandra says everyone's rent was reduced to help families like hers who were losing jobs.

- I think people rarely move out of here.

I don't think they do because it's just too good.

- This rent cut not only kept Sandra above water, but it helped them save.

They've since put up a new fence and created an outdoor oasis.

- With how low our rent, or, I guess, payment, is monthly, it really helped us a lot with a lot of the remodeling.

- Sandra's a part of the board of directors that helps run the community.

They have monthly meetings where they talk about the budget, bylaws, and enforcing community rules.

- Thankfully, us as neighbors, we don't handle that.

The management company does, so that's nice.

- It works out great for Sandra so she can focus on building up the community she loves so much.

- At least on our end, we try to keep everything right because we know we're not going to find anything this good.

So, why lose it and then start over again, stress out with high rents or high mortgages?

- Six and a half hours south, close to New Mexico, dozens of families are in the middle of negotiations.

- We weren't there for that long... when we received a letter telling us... we had a month to move out.

- When Mayra moved to this country in 2014, she and her family moved into a mobile home park that promised them all sorts of things, including being able to live here long term.

But that dream quickly fell through when the land from underneath them went up for sale and they had to move out.

- I was pregnant at the time... we had just gotten to the United States... we didn't have a lot of money.

It was very stressful situation for my family.

- That first displacement was difficult and stressful for Mayra.

She was pregnant at the time, had to live out of a hotel room with no kitchen to cook in, all while paying a storage unit and a dog sitter.

She ended up losing her baby to a miscarriage.

When we got the news in December... my heart broke.

- Fast forward six and a half years later, Mayra finds herself in a similar situation, living at Westside mobile home park, pregnant, and facing the possibility of displacement again.

Excuse me... they gave us three months to... figure it out, it's the same.

three months I'm supposed to be having my baby.

Sorry.

- She can't help but think about how her last pregnancy went, as she faces the same situation.

For my family and I, it's been frustrating to hear the news of the sale.

The uncertainty of being in this situation... again knowing that we're trapped, because... we are in this difficult situation.

- She feels like she's trapped.

And considering home prices in the area, it's easy to understand where she's coming from.

Durango, Colorado is home to more than 19,000 people.

It's six hours south of Denver, yet they are no strangers to the affordable housing crisis.

According to the Durango Area Association of Realtors, La Plata county is in a housing inventory pinch.

Between 2021 and 2022, median home prices increased by more than $100,000, to $612,000.

- Yeah, we're trying to get people kind of over that hump.

Because workforce wages are down here, and home prices are up here.

And we got to overcome that gap.

- Lisa Bloomquist knows this predicament well.

As the executive director of Homesfund, she helps people buy houses in Durango.

One option she turns to often are mobile homes.

- They still get the price stability.

They still get a roof over their head.

They still get to paint the walls whatever color they want.

- The median home price for a mobile home in Durango is $70,000.

That's eight times cheaper.

But the same problem exists here.

Mobile home parks are selling.

- We are not able to bring $5.5 million in cash to the table.

- Stefka Fanchi, with Elevation Community Land Trust, asked residents of Westside Mobile Homes if Elevation could put in an offer to buy the park on their behalf.

- Our offer for the mobile home park is designed to match the offer of the corporation that is trying to purchase it.

- On March 15, their $5.56 million offer was denied.

But the landlord didn't shut the door completely.

He provided a list of the reasons why the other offer was stronger.

And that set things in motion to craft a second offer.

The same week all these negotiations were going down, Mayra started feeling contractions.

I want the landlord to touch... his heart and to see that this isn't... just about money, we are real families... wishing for our dream to come true.

- That wish came true.

- We are buying the Westside Mobile Home... [cheering] - The residents' second offer was accepted, and Elevation Community Land Trust went under contract to purchase the land.

- I could not be more thrilled for the residents of Westside and for the opportunity to be able to dream alongside with them.

- With this sale, Westside Mobile Home Park became the fourth park in the state to sell to the residents since the law giving residents opportunity to purchase passed in 2020.

- Thank you so much for your hard work.

- So far, we've covered hundreds of miles of different experiences in mobile home parks.

Now we're taking a step back to look at why this mattered.

- This has been going on for a number of years.

- You've heard the problems faced by mobile home residents all over Colorado.

- And it's costing so much.

- And so did the state government.

In response, the state started the mobile home park oversight program in 2020.

That oversight is now the responsibility of Christina Postolowski.

- There are actually several components and things that we're responsible for.

- As soon as the program opened, staff received hundreds of complaints from mobile home residents, so many complaints the program asked to increase its staff to keep up with the demand.

- In the first years of this program, there are people who are still learning, or potentially people who are still testing the boundaries of what they can do.

- Park owners, she suspects, who aren't doing everything by the book.

- We're aware that about 30 parks, since mid-2020, haven't followed all the rules around providing notice to residents and the full opportunity to purchase.

But right now, we don't have the ability to investigate those issues on our own.

- This means mobile home owners all over the state are still not getting a fair chance to fully own the place where they live.

Instead, a lot of transactions include big corporations.

- It is challenging when you see multimillion or multibillion dollar corporations that are in this space and have a lot more money and resources than perhaps we do at the state.

- Her program keeps a running list of all the park sales in our state.

At any given time, there are a handful of listings.

- I am concerned for residents and their ability to find housing that they can pay for, particularly the residents who are on fixed incomes.

- Because that is what we hear at the door.

Every single time we knock on a door are the rent increases and how much they are and how difficult it is for people to keep up with them.

- Cesiah Guadarrama, associate director for 9to5, a statewide economic justice organization, worked to include rent stabilization in the latest mobile home bill that was signed into law.

But those efforts failed.

Instead, landlords can only increase the rent once a year.

But they can increase it by any amount they want.

- if they're immigrant communities, they're veterans, they're elderly, seniors.

- That's what we need to remember.

In a country pricing out so many families, Cesiah says we need to think about what our state is doing to protect one of our largest shares of affordable housing, mobile homes.

- All Coloradans need to think about what, what do they want their communities to look like?

Do you want only millionaires to be able to live in your community?

Do you want nobody who works in your community to be able to live there?

- That's a question we can all ask ourselves as we think about the housing market and how it impacts everyone in our state.

Thank you so much for watching.

And thank you to everyone who trusted us with their stories.

Goodnight.

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