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Colorado currently has over 900 mobile home parks
(Apr. 10) — The House Transportation and Local Government committee voted in favor of a bill sponsored by Rep. Edie Hooton, D-Boulder, and Rep. Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon, to protect the rights of mobile home owners in mobile parks.
“Colorado mobile home owners came to DORA to raise serious concerns about how park owners were treating them. The DORA report found that there is ongoing mistreatment occurring in manufactured home communities due to lack of enforcement of existing laws,” said Rep. Hooton. “In some mobile parks in Colorado, there are bad actors exploiting relatively loose regulatory structures.”
The Department of Regulatory Agencies’(DORA) report on Manufactured Housing Community Owners and Managers can be found here.
HB19-1309 creates a low cost and effective Mobile Home Park Act Dispute Resolution and Enforcement Program within the Department of Local Affairs Housing Division. It also provides counties the same permissive authority that home-rule municipalities have to enact and enforce regulations.
“In rural communities, affordable housing is at a premium and mobile home parks are an essential part of the solution to our housing crisis,” said Rep. McCluskie. “But we have concerns about what is happening at these parks. I am proud to bring forward a bill to put in place a dispute resolution process for effectively and peacefully resolving conflicts.”
In addition, HB19-1309 extends the time a homeowner has to sell or move from their home after an eviction from 48 hours to 60 days, and extends the time to cure a late payment from five days to ten days.
Approximately 100,000 Coloradans live in mobile homes, many of them within the state’s over 900 mobile home parks. Currently, the only recourse a homeowner of a mobile home has if they believe a park owner has violated the Colorado Mobile Home Park Act (MHPA) is to initiate a private action in civil court, which is often times too expensive for more homeowners.
The Colorado Mobile Home Park Act was passed in 1985 and it lists the rights of mobile home owners and park owners, but no enforcement was ever created.
The bill passed with a vote of 7-4 and now heads to the House Finance committee.