Predatory towing rampant at Colorado mobile home parks
Maria Ceballos was getting ready for bed at her home in the Berkeley Village Mobile Home Park last week when her son hurried into her room. His car had been towed. The reason, Ceballos found out, was that the required permit sticker sat visible on the car’s dashboard — but not affixed to the windshield.
“The tow driver was pretty aggressive,” Ceballos said in Spanish through a translator. “He said, ‘Why don’t you put this (expletive) sticker on the windshield like you’re supposed to?’ ”
When the tow company eventually brought the car back, Ceballos said it was damaged.
“I feel like I can’t even sleep because I have to watch over our cars to make sure nothing happens,” said Maria Gonzalez, another resident of the Adams County mobile home park who had a car towed from her own driveway, through an interpreter.
The experiences in Berkeley Village are hardly exceptions for mobile home residents across the Front Range. Towing companies have been running wild in those communities for years, homeowners and housing advocates said, towing cars for minor violations or, sometimes, for no explicit reason. Lawmakers are hoping a beefed-up towing task force will more closely regulate these companies — and further legislation may be on the way.
“I’m not aware of any park where residents are not harassed over this,” said Rep. Edie Hooton, a Boulder Democrat who spearheaded the 2021 towing bill.
THEY DON’T WARN YOU, THEY JUST TOW’
When it comes to parking in mobile home communities, the property owner gets to decide everything. Unlike other residential streets, the roads in these parks are considered private property.
The designation gives park owners the opportunity to put into place all sorts of rules that residents argue can be arbitrary or inconsistently enforced.
Tom Macurdy remembers a time in his Lafayette mobile home park when people were allowed to park on both sides of the street without issue. But now the park has a rule that outlaws street parking after 8 p.m., with the justification that the roadways need to be clear for fire lanes.
The park will rent residents a space down the street for a fee, Macurdy said. The other option: park outside the community and walk all the way in. Otherwise, prepare to get towed.
“How in the hell do streets change at night?” Macurdy said, adding that he’s seen service vehicles such as furnace or refrigerator repair trucks towed for violating the rule. “They don’t suddenly shrink at 8 p.m.”
Gonzalez, the Berkeley Village resident, said the towing issue is simple: “They take your cars because they want to.”
She had just gotten a new car two months ago, and hadn’t had the chance to acquire the required permit sticker, she said. A week later, she woke up at 3 a.m. to find the tow truck hooking her car up to take away. It was sitting in her driveway.