Nonprofit Saving Mobile Home Parks From Developers
While the term “trailer park” sometimes carries seamy connotations in the popular media, the reality for those who live there is often quite different. Many are neighborhoods with a distinct identity and are home to families who have been there for decades and raised children there. They are also one of the last remnants of affordable and low-income housing that isn’t publicly funded.
Residents, however, are uniquely vulnerable to having their lives
upended when hedge fund developers and other investors intent on cashing in on a real estate boom begin eyeing the communities for redevelopment. For the residents, who own their homes but not the land underneath, there is little protection to be had when an investor decides to evict them outright or imposes draconian rent hikes designed to have the same effect.
Within the last couple of years, there are numerous examples across the U.S. where investors seek to profit from acquiring these communities, often disrupting the lives of those who call these parks home.
Following is an example of one of those parks where residents, with the help of a non-profit, are attempting to forestall potential acquisition by well-heeled investors.
Source: The NonProfit Times — A nonprofit housing group in western Colorado has a plan to save “trailer park” communities in danger of being swallowed up by private equity firms looking to cash in on land values that have skyrocketed in the state’s resort-heavy western region.
The solution? Buy up the parks and transfer ownership to the residents before land speculators can get their hands on the property.
A 20-unit park just outside Glenwood Springs that went under contract for $2.4 million earlier this month to Manaus, a nonprofit based in nearby Carbondale, could serve as a test case. Manaus still must raise $250,000 for its affordable housing subsidiary, Roaring Fork Community Development Corp..to complete the financing by the April 30, 2023 closing date. Leaders are optimistic they’ll meet the deadline.
Manaus is trying to fill this gap by taking advantage of a Colorado law that allows a nonprofit to negotiate the purchase of a mobile home park on behalf of its residents if more than half approve.
“We don’t want to be long-term landlords, we just want to be a bridge to ownership,” Sydney Schalit, executive director of Manaus, told The NonProfit Times.
If all goes according to design, the group will look to replicate its current plan at Three Mile Park to preserve at least five more of the region’s estimated 55 mobile home park communities during the next five years, said Schalit.
