The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: Co-op Ownership of Mobile Home Communities.” View the full webinar here.

Andrea Chiriboga-Flor: In Colorado, I just want to talk a little bit about the timeline of how we got to this point where we have one of the strongest opportunity to purchase laws in the country now.

It wasn’t elected officials just doing the right thing, right? This always takes organizing, direct action, pressure, tactics, lawsuits—all these things—to get to this point. And so, my work started as a public transit organizer in Westwood in southwest Denver, where we’re purchasing this mobile home park and transitioning it to resident ownership. Two mobile home parks shut down, and 90 families were displaced, and at that point, there was no guarantee for relocation assistance. There was 10-day notice that the landlord had to give the residents before selling. That’s no time. Now we have 120 days plus usually another 120 days to come up with financing.

“I just really think it’s so important to acknowledge the history of what it took to get here and recognize that it was mostly the work of women of color.”

Throughout the past decade, we’ve seen this mass displacement happen. We’ve seen corporate investors such as Havenpark LLC, RV Horizons, Impact Communities, Kingsley Management—these huge companies—come in. Ascentia is another one buying up parks, because in Colorado there’s no cap on rent and rent control is illegal here, just like in 30 other states. So it’s not uncommon.

So, investors know they can get as much money as they want, even though now you can only increase rent once a year, but there’s no limit to what that looks like. And so, most of the folks I worked with were Latinx population, mostly women of color, not surprisingly, leading the charge—looking out for their communities, testifying at city council meetings, testifying at the Capitol, testifying in court against their landlords.

I just really think it’s so important to acknowledge the history of what it took to get here and recognize that it was mostly the work of women of color, who are the most marginalized and impacted by displacement rent increases a lot of times. And this mobile home park—like I talked about Denver Meadows which was featured in [the documentary] “A Decent Home”—that park did close after four years, but the legacy is not only opportunity to purchase laws, but laws that provide just cause eviction.

That means that residents can’t be evicted because their skirting is wrong, or their house is a different color than it should be. Now you have to have just cause in order to evict. And so, we’re trying to look out for residents [whose mobile home parks] are owned by corporate landlords, as well as creating pathways towards community ownership.

And so, for other states who are really thinking about this—me as a community organizer—there are not a lot of community organizers that specify mobile home parks in Colorado. We’re behind the scenes. We’re doing the door knocking. We’re building relationships. We’re building the trust.

Having infrastructure for community organizing is so incredibly critical to get to this point. This mobile home park in southwest Denver that we just bought, I already had relationships in that community, so they knew to come to me. They trusted me, and so we were able to organize in less than 120 days.

And so, something I do say is an organized community is a healthy community—and that’s real. We need to organize proactively, so that when the park goes up for sale or [a] crisis happens, that we can actually come together and create strategies and decision-making processes.