Summary
Triangle Trailer Park, the 12-unit trailer park immediately west of the much larger Westside Mobile Park, was sold by HomesFund to the larger park’s owner, Elevation Community Land Trust, who intends to combine and transform both parks into neighborhoods of homes with permanent foundations that will be annexed by Durango.
Most residents of Triangle Trailer Park near western Durango city limits came one step closer to becoming first-time homeowners last week when a community land trust purchased the park with plans to replace the trailers with homes on permanent foundations.
“When we came from Mexico we were looking for the American dream,” said property manager Alejandra Chacon of a majority of first- and second-generation immigrant residents in the park, most of whom she said believed they would live and die in mobile homes. “Now, it seems that the American dream is coming true.”
Two years ago, the low-income and working-class residents of Triangle and the adjacent Westside Mobile Park, located in the 21000 block of U.S. Highway 160, narrowly avoided displacement when their parks were almost sold to a Californian company infamous for raising rents.
Residents of the parks and members involved with affordable housing organizations in Durango banded together, and after a weekslong arduous legal battle with would-be buyer Harmony Communities, Westside and Triangle were purchased by Denver and Durango-based nonprofit organizations, Elevation Community Land Trust and HomesFund, respectively.
HomesFund, a mortgage lender and affordable housing advocacy organization, however, was never in the business of owning parks long-term, said Lisa Bloomquist Palmer, HomesFund executive director at the time Triangle was purchased.
She said HomesFund always intended to sell Triangle to Elevation after the community land trust had financially recovered from overleveraging itself to purchase Westside.
That plan came to fruition two years later when on Friday, HomesFund sold Triangle to Elevation for $800,000, said HomesFund Deputy Director Pam Moore.
Elevation plans to combine both parks and transform the area into a neighborhood of homes built on permanent foundations, with the underlying land owned under the community land trust model.
Elevation Community Land Trust’s President and CEO Stefka Czarnecki Fanchi said the United States’ first community land trust was formed by civil rights activists in the 1960s who pooled their money to buy land for Black sharecroppers who had lost their homes for registering to vote.
“Essentially, the underlying land remained community-owned, so it could always be preserved for the same purpose. Then, individual families purchase the improvement, or the homes themselves, and were able to pass them down through their families,” said Czarnecki Fanchi. “The idea is to balance individuals’ needs with the needs of the community.”
When Westside was put up for sale two years ago, its residents formed a co-op and attempted to purchase and transform the park into a resident-owned community, similar to what the residents of Animas View Mobile Home Park did a year before. However, the residents were unable to pool enough money to do so.
Nevertheless, even though Elevation bought Westside, and now Triangle, outright, they still have consulted the co-op and allowed a vote on any major decisions made involving Westside, including planning the area’s coming transformation.
Czarnecki Fanchi said the plan is to begin construction of houses in an unoccupied southeast corner of Westside’s property, move residents in, build more houses where those residents’ trailers were located, and continue until houses have been built out for everyone who wants one. This week, Czarnecki Fanchi flew to Durango from Denver to meet with residents and discuss the area’s transformation alongside architects and planners.
Chacon, who grew up in Westside, helped organize the co-op there and is an Elevation board member, said some residents were initially skeptical about Elevation’s plan, especially after watching new houses be built across the highway with multimillion dollar price tags.
“They said, ‘Alejandra, we know how pricey buying a home is, I’m going to be in debt for my entire life,’” she said.
But after several meetings between Elevation and the co-op, and becoming educated about the community loans trust model, more residents began to come around.
“We can sell just the home back to the household and we don’t include the value of the land it’s on, so it’s much less expensive,” Czarnecki Fanchi said. “And because we have a 99-year renewable land lease, we know that those homes will always be available to someone at a lower income level.”
Now, not only are the majority of residents on board, Chacon said, they are actively working toward making the idea a reality, attending meetings and voicing the needs their families will have for their new homes.
“(Czarnecki Fanchi) told them, ‘We’re working on it, we’re asking for federal grants, state grants, we’re making these houses affordable,’” she said.
With Triangle and Westside within sight of Durango’s western city limits, Elevation has also been working with the city of Durango for the past two years on a plan to annex both parks, Czarnecki Fanchi said.
“We’ve been working very closely with city planners, their housing department and other leadership,” she said. “They are very supportive.”
Czarnecki Fanchi said the biggest benefit of annexation for residents of both parks will be access to Durango’s utility network, including city water, because both parks as of now rely on well water that is expensive to treat.
From almost being priced out of the area to potentially becoming first-time homeowners, Chacon said the past two turbulent years made residents question whether they belonged in Durango.
“I live in a mobile home, my sister lives in a mobile home, our parents lived in a mobile home,” she said. “We never thought we were going to own an actual home with a permanent foundation.”
nmetcalf@durangoherald.com
