"In Appletree, the need for clean drinking water has eclipsed their fear of retaliation and residents voiced their concerns through letter writing and attending a community meeting with samples of their dirty water.”
—PiER Center
Western Slope | Mountain Voices Project Case Report: Protecting Our Mobile Home Communities
Report Jan-01-2022 2-min read
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: 2022
This evaluation report describes, from residents’ perspectives, how new mobile home park regulations put into place in Colorado in 2019 and 2020 affected their lives.
Primary Takeaways
- Colorado’s new mobile home park policies were passed with limited resources for implementation and enforcement. It took two years for residents to be given a full understanding of the policies meant to protect them and improve their living situations.
- The policies introduced a dispute resolution system, but some residents were afraid to use it.
- Park owners have the upper hand, and mobile home park residents live in fear of retaliation. More than half (51%) said their park was the only place they could afford to live in the area.
- One of the policies created a pathway for residents to purchase their parks, but doing so came with many challenges.
- Trusted local organizations can help residents gain their legal rights.
Overview and Objectives
Because of the high cost of living in Colorado, mobile homes have become an important pathway to owning a home. But most mobile homeowners do not own the land their home is on. New statewide policies passed in 2019 and 2020 were meant to protect tenants against rent increases, over billing, and eviction; improve the condition of parks; and provide a pathway to park ownership.
The authors wanted to know if the policies had benefited residents two years later.
Hypothesis or Approach
Partners in Research and Evaluation (PiER) Center worked with Mountain Voices Project—a community engagement and advocacy organization in Eagle, Pitkin, and Garfield Counties, Colorado—to evaluate the policies’ adoption, survey residents, meet with community partners, and hear from residents in community advisory groups.
How This Influences Change
Understanding the resources needed to make new policies stick and to support mobile home park residents will help future work to advance housing justice.
Research: Go Deeper
For this project, the Partners in Evaluation and Research (PiER) Center partnered with the local organization Mountain Voices Project (MVP) to learn about the impacts of these policies from mobile home park residents—positive or negative—and what ongoing challenges residents experienced with regards to the policies.
Based on their relationships with park residents and knowledge of community needs, MVP selected three mobile home park communities to work with for this project: Appletree, Cavern Springs, and Cottonwood.
While there have been many challenges associated with the implementation of these policies, there have also been some great successes at the local level. Across all three communities, partnerships between local organizations/governments and residents have established and strengthened trusting relationships. Specific to the Aspen to Parachute area, Mountain Voices Project (MVP) has convened their partner institutions and residents to lift the voice of the local people in the decision-making process.
Partners in Evaluation and Research Center at the Kaiser Permanente Colorado Institute for Health Research, 2022
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following:
- PiER Center
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