Boulder, CO trailer park called affordable housing pioneer

Most cities don’t brag about their trailer parks, but a group of Boulder residents who are taking over the one where they live have turned it into political gold for the city and themselves.

By Marcos Mocine-McQueen, Denver Post Staff Writer

The residents of Mapleton Mobile Home Park, the city of Boulder and a nonprofit organization are working to preserve something that has proven largely elusive – housing that the city’s working class can afford.

Boulder’s City Council passed a resolution more than two years ago to preserve the trailer park as affordable housing. City officials also have signed off on the idea of selling the land to Thistle Community Housing, a nonprofit organization that would allow the residents to run their own community.

What’s left is to negotiate a few economic and social issues for which there are no clear precedents, but the parties hope the deal will be finalized by January.

"It’s definitely cutting edge, and I think anyone who’s doing it is going to pave the path and become sort of the trailblazers for what I think is going to happen more and more," said Moises Loza, executive director of the Housing Assistance Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that promotes affordable housing.

"When I first got to Boulder, a friend told me, ‘You need to live in the trailer park,"’ said Debbie Feustel. "I thought ‘no way, trailer trash’ because I had stereotypes about who lived in trailer parks."

That was two years ago. Feustel has lived in Mapleton since and says she wouldn’t live anywhere else in Boulder.

"The trailer park is where you live in Boulder if you’re middle class, if you want community," Feustel said.

The park, at 2635 Mapleton Ave., isn’t easy to locate from the street. There are scrubby, barely marked entrances on the north and south sides of the lot. But those who know where to go find themselves in a park-like setting: deep green grass runs up to the street on both sides and flowers and vegetables grow throughout the lot. Cottonwood trees rise 50 feet into the air, casting shade on the roadways.

The 132 homes are relics of a bygone era. Most are 52 feet long and only 12 feet wide. Such narrow homes are no longer manufactured. They sit close, separated by 10 to 15 feet. Residents pay between $255 and $482 rent per month, depending on their income.

For the city of Boulder, the Mapleton Mobile Home Park may be more valuable than any of the other homes in the city. That’s saying something in a town where the median price for a single family home has risen to more than $400,000, according to the housing division of the city’s Housing and Human Services Department.

The city purchased the mobile home park land seven years ago in order to conduct flood-control work on a stream that cuts through the park. The City Council committed to keep the trailer park affordable. The council hopes to complete the deal with Thistle by January, when all of the floodplain work and city paperwork is likely to be wrapped up.

Boulder has wrestled for years with an affordable housing shortage. It has been able to add between 200 and 300 units per year to its stock of affordable housing, but that falls far short of demand.

The City Council has set a goal of making 10 percent of the city’s 45,000 housing units permanently affordable. Right now they are roughly halfway to that goal, with about 2,250 units in the affordable price range.

"Being able to add 114 units in one project, units that are already there, that’s a great thing for the city," said John Pollak, the city’s housing director.

Mark Reeder, a Mapleton resident, agreed. "It’s a political plum for the council," he said.

But the council’s commitment was the beginning of the path the residents hope will lead to self-governance.

"We were confronted with the question, ‘Now what?"’ Reeder said. "We knew we didn’t want it controlled by some distant, out-of- state company. We wanted to buy the park outright."

But as he and other residents began looking at how much it would cost, they realized they did not have enough money to buy the property. Add to that the cost of replacing aging sewer and water systems, and the cost soared well beyond the reach of the residents.

They began looking for a buyer who would share their priorities – the park should remain a trailer park, the housing should remain affordable, and the residents should be allowed to stay.

That last point, said Loza, is becoming more and more difficult because an owner could sell the property to a developer for a shopping center or subdivision.

The Mapleton residents found Thistle, a nonprofit that manages and develops affordable housing throughout the area. After talks, the city decided that Thistle would purchase the property but that it would be leased back to the residents for 99 years.

Thistle has raised almost $1 million dollars to buy the property but essentially will be an absentee landlord under the 99-year lease.

The Mapleton Residents Association will govern the park. The residents will be responsible for setting lease rates, making rules and contracting with a private company to handle the nuts and bolts of running the park day-to-day.

Loza said that while there have been a small number of situations in which residents of a park attempted a takeover, this arrangement is largely uncharted territory.

"I’ve never heard of one quite like this," Loza said of Mapleton. "The experience in this field is pretty limited."

Although the Mapleton residents admit it’s a daunting task, they are looking forward to it. Reeder said the fact that many of the people in the park are poor will actually work to their advantage.

"There isn’t a person in this park that isn’t a can-do person," Reeder said as a nearby deer munched on grass and a neighbor sat on his porch playing a wooden flute. "We can’t buy our way out of problems. We’ve always had to be problem- solvers to get by."

Those people are now negotiating the finer points of the deal.

If the park is to remain affordable, said Roger Lewis, Thistle’s asset manager, a ceiling must be set to limit the selling price of trailers.

In Boulder, it is likely that residents could sell their trailers for a price that would be out of reach of the area’s poor and working class.

That could create a problem if that ceiling is set at $40,000, for example, and a resident buys a fancy new trailer for $70,000. If the owner of the trailer decides to sell it, the owner would have to take a $30,000 loss on a price that is far less than the market would bear. Most of the trailers in the park are 30 to 40 years old, and many are nearing the end of their life.

"It’s not an easy issue and it’s just one of many," Lewis said. "We don’t know exactly how to do this because we’re walking down a path no one else has."

Another problem they will face is that trailers are made much wider these days and many of the lots are too small.

But the residents are moving forward with their plans. They have mapped out which lots in the park receive the most light and plan to place solar panels on the roofs of those trailers. They also plan to install solar panels on the roof of a planned laundromat/community center. They hope to produce enough energy to power the park and send surplus power to the general power grid.

For Silvia Gentile, the park has been an escape from the subsistence living found in many of Boulder’s apartment complexes.

"We’re not paying a lot of money, but you can live with dignity," Gentile said. "You don’t have to live in a cage."

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1563698,00.html