Overview:
With a $42.5 million sale looming, San Lazaro residents are trying to buy their Boulder County mobile home community.
On Aug. 23, the smell of grilled meat permeated the rows of mobile homes in the San Lazaro community, located at 5505 Valmont Road in unincorporated Boulder County, as residents sold Mexican and Bosnian food outside their front doors and a DJ booth played Spanish music.
It felt like any other neighborhood summer block party, but signs reading “Ayudanos a quedarnos en San Lazaro,” which translates to “Help us stay in San Lazaro,” and QR codes requesting donations told a different story. San Lazaro residents are rushing to raise tens of millions of dollars to keep their mobile home community in the hands of its over 800 residents.
When the mobile home community went up for sale in March for $42.5 million, it gave residents 120 days to organize financing to buy it themselves. Then, in early August, an anonymous buyer’s full-price offer came in that sent San Lazaro residents into a scramble to match the bid by Dec. 8.
San Lazaro has over 200 mobile homes that span across 28 acres of land, housing working families, seniors and children. Residents said their community is 60% Latino. Julie Heins, a steering committee leader who has lived in San Lazaro for 38 years, described how the community’s diversity has helped neighbors unite to oppose the sale.
“Regardless of our cultural backgrounds, we are good friends,” Heins said. “And I’m not a Spanish speaker, but I’m learning slowly, and they are very patient with us. But they also do their best to communicate with us in English, so we’re really a growing community, a cohesive community.”
The current San Lazaro owner and the anonymous buyer declined to comment.
Nearly all of the residents in the San Lazaro mobile home community own their homes but pay rent for the land underneath them. Patty Schindler, a resident of the mobile home community for 43 years, is concerned that if a new owner takes over the land, potential rent increases will drive residents out of one of Boulder County’s last unsubsidized mobile home communities.
“Well, in Boulder County, of course, affordable housing is just an enormous issue, and they have to realize they want to displace over 800 people from affordable housing,” Schindler said. “What’s the sense in that? That sounds like it’s crazy.”
The San Lazaro coalition has worked alongside ROC USA, a nonprofit that helps mobile home residents buy their own communities, and the property management company Thistle Community Housing for guidance. Recently, Community United Church of Christ in Boulder donated $40,000 to help the San Lazaro residents towards a purchase, and they are actively seeking other pledges.
The coalition is working to secure a $15 million ROC USA loan. On the state level, San Lazaro is actively pursuing Proposition 123, a 2022 voter-approved ballot measure that dedicates a portion of the roughly $300 million annual income tax to funding affordable housing. Approximately $3 million will go to the residents of San Lazaro once awarded.
Heins stated that the community has also attended county commissioners’ meetings, telling them stories about their neighborhood and hoping for financial assistance from the board. She added that the county commissioners have “really stepped up and offered a lot of support,” as the residents continue to wait and see “what amount of money they can offer.”
Residents are hoping to hear from the county commissioners “in the next couple weeks” after asking them for assistance in any capacity.
In the meantime, the steering committee has decided to arrange community fundraiser events to help fill the $24.5 million financial gap. The food fundraiser on Sunday, Aug. 23, was the community’s first public event, and organizers raised an additional $40,000, according to Heins.
A fundraising garage sale where the community will be accepting home goods, cookware and clothing will be taking place on Sept. 19 at the mobile home community. The community had received $20,000 in donations from people in Boulder, local businesses and philanthropic foundations prior to Sunday, according to its website.
For residents like Schindler, the request for donations of any size serves as both a support for the San Lazaro community as the clock ticks down and a plea to officials not to abandon her community.
“I don’t want the city and the county and the state to throw us under the bus,’ Schindler said. “You have to know that we filled up school buses to go to city schools — that’s Whittier, Casey and Boulder High.”
San Lazaro hopes to become the fourth resident-owned mobile home park in Boulder County. Boulder isn’t the only community working to save its mobile-home community. Sunset Park Manufactured Home Community residents in Loveland, many of whom are seniors and retirees, are attempting to purchase their 164-home park before it is sold for $44.5 million to an outside buyer.
The pattern reflects a national trend where investors who are attracted to the land that lies underneath mobile homes look to buy in order to raise revenue by increasing lot rents and adding fees, without having to build anything new. As traditional homes and their rent prices have climbed out of reach for many investors, mobile homes have become a target.
For San Lazaro residents, buying their community outright is the only way to guarantee that the fate of increased prices doesn’t fall onto their community.
Currently, residents are paying $1,000 or more on rent. Heins is scared of someone from outside the community coming to purchase the San Lazaro mobile homes. She acknowledged that if that were to occur, rents would go up “200 to 400 dollars,” which would have “a really big impact for a community with lower-level income.”
“If we can buy this park, we will be the owners, the collective, the cooperative ownership of the park,” Heins said. “We will all have a say in whether or not we need to raise lot rents. We will have a say in how much that needs to be.”
While the effort to save San Lazaro Community has brought on an existential threat to its residents, rushing them to organize a potential purchase by the end of the year, neighbors who were once separated through language barriers are now showing up arm-in-arm at county meetings with officials and fundraising events in their community.
Whatever the outcome of the sale, Schindler says the fight has unified its residents in a way that didn’t exist before.
“Now when you ride down the street, people make eye contact and wave and smile,” Schindler said. “So it’s brought us together.”
