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.
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, overbilling, 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.
Partners in Research and Evaluation (PiER) Center worked with The Family Center/La Familia, a family services nonprofit in Larimar County, Colorado, to evaluate the policies’ adoption, survey residents, meet with community partners, and hear from residents in community advisory groups.
“Residents in one park explained that while attending a legislator’s informational session about the new policies, the park manager sat in the audience pretending to be a resident, only to take pictures of the residents to send to the owner.”
—PiER Center
Understanding the resources needed to make new policies stick and to support mobile home park residents will help future work to advance housing justice.
For this project, the Partners in Evaluation and Research (PiER) Center partnered with The Family Center/La Familia 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, La Familia selected four primary mobile home park communities to work with for this project: Hickory, Poudre Valley, Park Lane, and Collins Aire.
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.
Partners in Evaluation and Research Center at the Kaiser Permanente Colorado Institute for Health Research, 2022
This study and report was conducted and created by the following:
