Mobile home owners air woes

By Steven Olson
Correspondent

More than anything, they were mad they weren't told.

"They" are most of the 50 or so people from the Dry Creek Mobile Home Community who showed up for a mobile home park forum Feb. 17 at the Larimer County Courthouse.

Now the question that mostly consumes them is, "What now?"

About 130 people were notified in July that the owner of Dry Creek, Uniprop, was shutting the park down March 1. It was how they were notified that enraged many members; they found out about it through the Fort Collins Coloradoan that morning. They received official notices from Uniprop that afternoon.

State Rep. John Kefalas (D-Fort Collins) held the recent forum to determine just what kind of protection people who live in similar situations should have.

Patti Radford, a member of the panel that spoke at the meeting, said that the fact they had six months to move their mobile homes to another site was an example of the impetus that brought her and other former residents to the forum.

"Six months is not enough," said Radford, referring to the length of time she was given by Uniprop to find another place to move her home. After months of searching and trying to get financing to move her house, Radford said, she finally closed on a deal two days before the forum. The experience was a frustrating grind for her.

"I was working on this night and day trying to find someone who would loan us money to get this done," said Radford, who believes there is a prejudice among most bankers with regards to manufactured housing. "The second they find out you're in a manufactured house," Radford said, making a dismissive gesture, "they don't want to have anything to do with you."

Radford says she was turned down three times for a loan that would pay for the construction costs to move her and Chris Kresge's house off the Dry Creek property.

Radford said she and Kresge were looking to move to Milliken, until they discovered they would have to pay $38,000 in fees just to move into a park there. They finally managed to find a place in Dacono.

Though Radford and the rest were angry with Uniprop, their prevailing mood was articulated by another former resident, John Withrow, in a statement that said: "We did not come here to complain about Dry Creek closing. We came here to offer solutions. It is too late for us but not for everyone."

Kefalas said he called the forum to see if legislation protecting mobile home residents was necessary for the next legislative session, but the idea wasn't set in stone. "If that (legislation) is what we need to do, then we'll do it," he said. "If we can come up with something else, we'll do something else."

An idea that garnered a lot of enthusiasm was one in which a cooperative would be set up that would allow residents to have the first shot at buying the property on which their homes sit. This is a common problem with manufactured homes in mobile home parks. Ellen Danforth, an assistant librarian with Fort Collins High School, read a letter from her husband, who said mobile home parks are steadily disappearing because manufactured home owners do not own the land their homes sit on, and their property depreciates with time, rather than appreciates.

Radford suggested that owners of mobile home parks be required to put deposits they get from residents into accounts that could bear interest. At the very least, residents could use the money to partially defer the cost of moving their homes. In the case of Dry Creek, Radford said, there was no interest earned. When she got back the money for her deposit, she got back exactly what she had put in years earlier.

Megan Pfansteil, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Home Association, and Maurice Head of the Fort Collins Advance Planning Department said there were programs in place to help people relocate. The problem, in this instance, was that many people who lived in Dry Creek did not qualify.

"You've got a chance if you're either low income or you're Donald Trump," Radford said. "Most of us just don't qualify."