Mobile home owners in precarious position as investors swoop in
ASPEN, Colorado — When the time came for her to sell the mobile home park she and her son owned near Aspen, 89-year-old Harriett Noyes had two big offers and an even bigger decision: Take nearly $30 million from a developer who would likely evict her family and friends to build luxury homes, or sell to the county for a fraction of that to preserve affordable housing in one of the most expensive areas in the United States.
She chose family and friends.
“I could see the need for the people to have a place to live, and this was their life and they had homes,” said Noyes, who has lived in the Phillips Mobile Home Park for more than four decades. “I just didn’t have the heart to just jerk it out from under ‘em.”
Carved into a red-rock hillside along the banks of the Roaring Fork River in the mountains of western Colorado, the park is one of the last bastions of affordable housing in the area, which takes pride in its world-class skiing and is a veritable playground for the rich and the famous. Noyes and her son Hyrum, 61, sold the 76-acre park to Pitkin County for $6.5 million in 2018 with the promise of upgrades and to keep the community affordable. The deal preserved as affordable housing 35 mobile homes, four cabins and an old ranch house, according to The Aspen Times.
Across the country, mobile home parks are an attractive investment. Tenants own their homes but not the land they sit on, and because the homes aren’t actually easy to move, are at the mercy of landlords, who can increase rents or sell the land out from under them.
Some states are passing laws to increase protections for mobile home owners, while nonprofit groups are also stepping in to help residents facing rent hikes or evictions.
Here’s an explanation of the situation:
Advocates say mobile homes are often necessary for people who can’t afford to buy a traditional home, especially in rural areas with fewer affordable housing options. But mobile homes typically depreciate quickly, rather than increasing in value like a traditional house. Residents can be caught in a tough position if their asset loses value at the same time as their lot rent rises, said Nicole Mueller, a lawyer with Legal Aid of North Carolina who has represented mobile home owners facing rent hikes and eviction.
“You know as soon as they buy them, it’s just like a car basically, except that the car is chained to a piece of property and is really expensive to move,” Mueller said.
It’s a common arrangement for mobile home residents to own the mobile home but not the land underneath, paying rent or “lot fees” to a landlord who owns the park where they live. Mueller said that if lot rents rise too quickly, residents can be caught in an unfortunate position of having to pay thousands to move their unit to another park — if they can find one.
“I didn’t want to feel above the people. I was one of them that was just a common, ordinary person making a living and had the same problems they did,” Harriett Noyes said of her decision to pass up more than $23 million and stay put. “And we shared our problems . ... They turned into being my family.”