{"id":74376,"date":"2019-09-15T03:45:31","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T09:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/key-findings-of-the-mobile-home-series\/"},"modified":"2019-09-15T09:45:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T09:45:31","slug":"key-findings-of-the-mobile-home-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/key-findings-of-the-mobile-home-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Key findings of the mobile home series"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=f09783c9-8262-4994-8871-6e0e63295d9e&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1600\" height=\"762\" alt=\"Residents in Apache Mobile Home Park in La Plata County have seen lot rent rise in recent years under corporate ownership. But residents still have problems with aging sewer lines that back up into homes and yards on the lower end of the park in the winter.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Residents in Apache Mobile Home Park in La Plata County have seen lot rent rise in recent years under corporate ownership. But residents still have problems with aging sewer lines that back up into homes and yards on the lower end of the park in the winter.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>More than 100,000 people live in more than 900 mobile home parks in Colorado. But the number of parks is declining and ownership is consolidating as large investors buy in, sometimes leading to displacement and redevelopment.<\/p>\n<p>About 1,300 households live in 45 mobile home parks across La Plata County, and residents in the Durango area say they have seen lot rents increase by 50% to 100% in parks owned by corporations.<\/p>\n<p>Even Durango\u2019s middle class is finding mobile homes \u2013 the \u201caffordable\u201d option \u2013 too pricey in a town where the median home goes for $500,000. So they\u2019re moving.<\/p>\n<p>In Adams County, which has the state\u2019s largest concentration of mobile homes, the number of both homes and parks has dropped to 11,300 homes in 66 parks today, from more than 13,000 mobile homes in 71 parks 20 years ago, according to assessor records.<\/p>\n<p>About a third of Weld County\u2019s mobile homes were built from 1960 to 1979, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Many don\u2019t meet safety standards.<\/p>\n<p>The 2013 floods continue to reverberate for many mobile home residents in northern Colorado. In Lyons, Evans and Milliken, 273 mobile homes were destroyed, and most were not replaced because parks failed to reopen.<\/p>\n<p>Aspen took steps in the early 1980s to preserve a mobile home park in town that exists today as an affordable housing neighborhood. Pitkin County has since bought or helped preserve four other parks in the upper Roaring Fork Valley for affordable housing.<\/p>\n<p>In San Miguel County, the last mobile home park closed in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>In Steamboat Springs and Routt County in the past decade, the number of mobile homes has declined by half.<\/p>\n<p>Outside Greeley, Hill-N-Park allowed residents to invest in a mobile home and own the land beneath it. Now, residents feel abandoned.<\/p>\n<p>The Aspens Mobile Home Village in Avon is home for many workers in the hospitality, service and construction industries, a precarious home for the many immigrants who fill those jobs.<\/p>\n<p>Aurora was poised to become a national model with its moratorium on redeveloping mobile home parks. Now it struggles to provide affordable housing.<\/p>\n<p>The Fort Collins City Council put a moratorium on redevelopment of mobile home parks until August 2020 and is considering increasing the six months\u2019 notice for redevelopment of a park and giving residents or nonprofits the option to buy the land if it goes up for sale.<\/p>\n<p>An Adams County mobile home park is among the latest to shut down due to redevelopment. The Crestville Mobile Home Park, near Federal Boulevard and West 56th Avenue, is filled with abandoned homes and at times, neighbors say, animals and vagrants. The owner would not say what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-element naviga-subheadline1\">Contributors<\/div>\n<p>Contributors to this project include: The Aspen Times, Associated Press, Aurora Sentinel, Colorado Sun, Colorado Independent, Cortez Journal, Delta County Independent, Durango Herald, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Fox 31-KDVR, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Greeley Tribune, KUNC, Montrose Daily Press, Ouray County Plaindealer and Steamboat Pilot &amp; Today.<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-scoreboard\">\n<h4 class=\"scoreboard-title\">About the series<\/h4>\n<p>This project is an ambitious, first-of-its-kind collaboration between The Durango Herald, The Colorado Sun and a dozen Colorado news organizations.<br>\n                Journalists across the state focused on the evolving landscape for mobile homes \u2013 our largest source of unsubsidized, affordable housing.<br>\n                Read it at<br>\n                The-Journal.com\/Parked<br>\n                .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Residents in Apache Mobile Home Park in La Plata County have seen lot rent rise in recent years under corporate ownership. But residents still have problems with aging sewer lines that back up into homes and yards on the lower end of the park in the winter.Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald More than 100,000 people live in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1413,5469],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-74376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-mobile-home","tag-parked"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74376"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=74376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}