Boulder annexes mobile home park to redevelop it

Ponderosa Mobile Home Park is officially a part of Boulder.

The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved an annexation agreement for the 6-plusacre mobile home park on north Broadway that for decades was in an unincorporated enclave surrounded by Boulder proper.

The plan calls for the gradual replacement of Ponderosa’s 68 mobile homes with fixed-foundation, single-family homes, and some duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes over more than 10 years.

Officials are sticking to their promise not to displace any households as the property is redeveloped.

Residents of the neighborhood have the option to remain in their mobile homes as they are now, with guarantees provided at the meeting that any of them who would want to move into one of the new homes would qualify to do so affordably based on their incomes, and would be prioritized to enter the new homes before anyone from outside the park could.

But some residents continue to distrust the city, which purchased the mobile home park for more than $4 million in 2017 with the intent to annex it.

“Through some of the hard work that was put in by everyone at the city, staff especially, I think we can gain (your trust) back,” Councilwoman Mary Young said. “This is the best possible thing that could have happened while not displacing people.”

Charissa Poteet is disappointed she and her neighbors cannot explore the open market to sell their mobile homes.

While Boulder has offered to buy mobile homes from Ponderosa residents who wish to leave at prices based on valuations performed by a city-hired assessor, and will allow sales to parties outside the park, the city will not issue new lot leases to anyone from outside the park wishing to buy a mobile home.

It effectively limits current residents to doing business with the city, since the cost of towing a mobile home from the park makes a deal with an outsider much less feasible.

“That doesn’t seem hardly American to me,” Poteet said, disagreeing with the city that she and other residents couldn’t get more than what it has offered for their homes.

Boulder Director of Housing and Human Services Kurt Firnhaber said the average monthly housing costs for Ponderosa households are about $775, between lot rents that are $530 and the residents who have payments left on their mobile homes.

Officials have stood behind the valuations of the mobile homes and stated that the reasons no new leases can be offered for the mobile homes in their current states is because the redevelopment laid out in the annexation plan needs to move forward.

Mobile homes in many parts of the park, about two-thirds of it, according to Firnhaber, are too close together to comply with city codes meant to reduce fire risks.

Flatirons Habitat for Humanity will lead the replacement of the mobile homes with the new fixedstructure dwellings.

Attempting to quell the fears of Poteet and other residents that they might not qualify to own a new home, Flatirons Habitat executive director Susan Lythgoe promised her organization would be able to find ways to work with households to enter them into homeownership at the park through an affordable mortgage, which would be subsidized with public funding if necessary.

Higher-earning residents would be unlikely to qualify for the $775-a-month housing cost average they are paying now, should they want to move into one of the new Habitat homes, Firnhaber said.

But they would have the option to stay in their mobile homes.