When San Lazaro Mobile Home Park was listed for sale this spring, residents organized an effort to buy it themselves. They feared that a new owner could sharply increase rents, displace families or redevelop the property, dismantling a community that has existed for decades.
Now, that effort has taken on greater urgency.
On Aug. 10, residents were notified that an undisclosed buyer had offered the full asking price of $42.5 million, according to members of the residents’ group organizing the purchase. Boulder Reporting Lab was unable to determine who made the offer. David Eisenstein, an attorney for the park’s current owner, said the sale agreement and related nondisclosure agreements prohibit him from identifying the buyer or disclosing its plans for the park.
The offer leaves San Lazaro’s more than 800 residents racing to assemble a financing package to match it. Their public fundraising campaign has raised about $8,600 so far.
Resident ownership would allow the community to set its own rents and address concerns including poor water quality.
Under Colorado law, mobile home park residents must be given an opportunity to purchase their community when it is put up for sale. San Lazaro residents’ initial 120-day period to submit an offer expired in July. The competing offer triggered a final 120-day period for residents to submit a counteroffer. The deadline is Dec. 8.
Residents asked the state, Boulder County, the City of Boulder and several nonprofit organizations for help, arguing that purchasing San Lazaro would preserve one of Boulder County’s largest sources of unsubsidized affordable housing.
“In our initial conversation with the state, county and city, everyone said they had no money in their budget to help with filling the gap,” said Julie Heins, a member of San Lazaro’s steering committee. The state, county and city are facing budget shortfalls of $1.2 billion, $13 million and $6.5 million, respectively.
On Aug. 11, the Boulder County commissioners considered the residents’ request for financial help. More than 80 residents filled the meeting room and spilled into the hallway, carrying signs that read “Help us save San Lazaro” and “Ayudamos a quedarnos en San Lazaro” or “Help us stay in San Lazaro.”
In a letter to commissioners, residents called San Lazaro “affordable housing at a steal.”
“We are 213 homes of working families, seniors on fixed incomes, and longtime neighbors — a multicultural, multigenerational community — who already provide our own affordable housing without subsidy,” they wrote.
“Preserving San Lazaro doesn’t create affordability from scratch; it protects affordability that already exists and is already woven into the fabric of the county.”
The commissioners directed county staff to prepare a letter of intent within two weeks, signaling an interest in helping residents pursue the purchase. But they did not commit funding or say how much the county might contribute.
“We’ve been able to assist a number of communities in becoming resident-owned, and we have a very strong desire to help,” Commissioner Claire Levy said, describing mobile home communities as “wonderful places with a true sense of community.”
“We’re not yet ready to say we can, but we want to explore that.”
A daunting financing gap
In financial projections, San Lazaro residents had projected receiving about $11 million each from the county and city.
The city cannot use its affordable housing funds to help purchase San Lazaro because the park is outside city limits, according to Kurt Firnhaber, Boulder’s director of Housing and Human Services.
ROC USA, a national nonprofit that helps mobile home residents buy their communities, could provide up to $15 million in financing for park purchases. But Thistle Community Housing, ROC USA’s local partner, told residents that it could not commit resources to San Lazaro until they secured additional support, like government or philanthropic grants, according to Heins.
“It hit us like a ton of bricks and shifted us into a fight-or-flight mode,” she told Boulder Reporting Lab.
Thistle did not respond to a request for comment.
Residents are planning a fundraising event on Aug. 23 and plan to apply for a state affordable housing grant that they say could provide up to $5 million.
Even with that support, the price presents an extraordinary challenge. No other Boulder County park has faced a price tag approaching San Lazaro’s. Residents of Sans Souci Mobile Home Park, which has about one-quarter as many lots, purchased their property for $3.3 million in 2021.
Boulder County has provided administrative assistance to the residents.
Susana Lopez-Baker, director of the Boulder County Housing Authority, has met weekly with San Lazaro’s steering committee to discuss its options, support that Heins called “invaluable.”
The county also commissioned an independent appraisal to assess the property’s value. It has not made the appraised value public.
What is at stake
Some residents have lived in the park since the 1980s. Others grew up at San Lazaro and are now raising their own children there.
Residents have worked across cultural and language barriers to organize the purchase effort. Their website, created to provide community updates, is available in Spanish, English and Bosnian.
They say buying the park is about preserving the community they have built together as much as protecting relatively affordable housing.
“This has been the safest community I have ever lived in, and amidst this soul-crushing housing crisis, I have found my faith in humanity restored consistently in this community,” Hannah Craven, a seven-year resident, told the Boulder County commissioners in May.
“Most of the people in our community, they work in Boulder, and our kids go to schools in Boulder,” said Diana Briones, who has lived at San Lazaro with her children for about five years. “These are people who are working in your kitchens, who are helping your kids. Losing our homes would make us go further out and have to look for different jobs, different schools. The City of Boulder would be losing a lot of the community also, not just us.”
San Lazaro is also home to more than 140 children, most of whom attend Boulder Valley School District schools. Any potential displacement would come as the district confronts falling enrollment and considers closing schools.
But the community’s financial position is precarious.
Residents pay slightly more than $1,000 a month to rent the lots beneath homes they generally own. About half the park’s residents are housing cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than a third of their income on housing, according to a 2024 Boulder Watershed Collective study. Even relatively modest rent increases could force some families to leave.
Mobile home parks have increasingly attracted private equity firms and other real estate investors. The properties can be lucrative because residents typically own their homes but rent the land beneath them. Moving a manufactured home can be prohibitively expensive, leaving residents with few options when rents rise.
Promotional materials for one mobile home park investment course highlight that dynamic, telling potential investors that “the fact that tenants can’t afford the $5,000 it costs to move a mobile home keeps revenues stable and makes it easy to raise rents without losing any occupancy.”
In some communities, residents have seen their lot rents double after investment firms purchased their parks.
San Lazaro Properties LLP, a Minnesota-based partnership, has owned the park for more than 40 years. The prospective buyer’s plans for the property remain unknown.
If this community is to remain permanently affordable, and not a windfall to current residents who can then sell at any price, where is a discussion of affordable housing guardrails?
I’m not following your comment. What do you mean residents can sell at any price? What kind of affordable housing guidelines would you propose?
I’m confused at your cynical first assumption that residents will sell their homes. They want to be able to live affordably here and being able to manage their own community would be a significant part of that. Selling a home they could own defeats the purpose of establishing stability that is home to many. Your concern about affordability guardrails seems disingenuous.
Not an immediate sale, but it seems probable that due to changed personal circumstances, some could opt to sell in the future (death, disability, divorce, change of plans, simply moving). In that case, the lot price would be dictated by the market, and not necessarily an “affordable” price for the new owner. The affordable aspect is lost.
With affordable housing programs, there often are % limits on annual price appreciation, income qualification of the buyer, etc. To be sure, if the government contribution is relatively minor (a few million $), then dispense with this red tape. But, if we are speaking of $22,000,000 between the City and County, isn’t this predominantly an affordable housing development and should be treated accordingly?
Perhaps there should also be a law that discloses who the buyer will be. As far as I know, Alden Global Capital’s Homes of America has not purchased any parks in Colorado but if it’s them, or someone else following their vulture playbook, then the expectation is a massive increase in rent, end of any free services, expanded time to maintenance, and getting stuck having to sell.
https://pestakeholder.org/news/senator-launches-investigation-of-alden-global-capital-other-corporate-owners-of-manufactured-housing/
How is it possible that this relatively small piece of land could be worth $42.5 million?
Think “slightly more than” $1,000 per month lot rent already, almost certainly to increase if the buyer who can afford $42.5 million wants another lot rent increase, and as likely as not it will increase every year. Mobile home residents can’t usually just pick up and move like they’re facing an apartment rent increase, because “mobile” homes are tough to move and you also have to find another park or location to put them. Selling might be an option but then you have to find another place to live. So, often residents are basically captive sources of income to corporate owners.
It’s likely because the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan update removes zoning specifically for manufactured homes. Developers will be able to fully redevelop all the mobile home parks in Boulder, thus making the land far more valuable than it previously was (to the detriment of all the residents there).
Let me know of any fundraisers for San Lazaro Mobile Home Park.
I want to participate.
It sounds like they need all the help they can get, no matter how small the contribution.
I wish them well and hope they can buy and keep their community.
Kay Negash
Hi Kay. Thanks for asking and for your kind generosity. We have a website, sanlazaroresidents.com/support where you can donate if that’s what you had in mind. Or you can come to our first fundraiser, a Celebration of Cuisine where residents will be selling home cooked food August 23 at San Lazaro, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. I’ve been told the breakfast hours will include the traditional Latin American dishes of menudo and tamales, and our Bosnian community will offer their delicious Burek which is a flavor celebration in your mouth. Of course all of the food will be of that same quality and unique traditional flavors. Please tell your friends and come early. It’s likely we’ll sell out before our 6:00 closing!
We are planning another fundraiser, a garage sale, for September 19 at San Lazaro. If you have anything you could donate for the sale please go to our website and send a message at sanlazaroresidents.com/contact. Someone will get back with you. All donations must be in excellent condition, and we can help with pickup if the item is furniture and difficult for you to transport.
With your help, we can achieve our goal. Thank you so much!
Julie Heins
This is the nightmare scenario. Private equity swoops with enormous cash buyout, then jack rents into the stratosphere to repay investors. This will drive out all current residents and replace them with those who can afford unaffordable housing. Then the buyer sells the property to another private equity firm after they sit on for another five to seven years to reap the appreciation. The cycle continues.
Easy for Firnhaber to say the city can’t help. Shame! San Lazaro should have been annexed by the city long ago. Now the county and ROC need to step up FAST. This is not the time to “explore” it’s time to ACT.
San Lazaro is more than a real-estate transaction. It is a test of whether our stated commitment to affordable housing extends to protecting the affordable communities that already exist.
These residents are not asking Boulder County to create a community for them. They have already created one—213 homes, more than 800 residents, 140 children, working families, seniors, and neighbors who have built their lives together across generations, cultures, and languages. Preserving San Lazaro would protect an existing source of affordable housing that would be extraordinarily difficult—and likely far more expensive—to replace after it is lost.
The December 8 deadline requires more than expressions of concern. It requires the county, state, nonprofit lenders, philanthropic institutions, and other community partners to develop a transparent and coordinated financing strategy with clearly defined commitments and a timetable for action. Not every institution can solve this alone. But each should be required to say publicly what it can contribute—and then work collectively to close the gap.
If Boulder County cannot mobilize to preserve a community of this size, history, and importance, we should ask what our affordable-housing commitments truly mean. San Lazaro’s residents have organized, shown up, and fought for their community. Now the institutions that speak so often about housing affordability must demonstrate what those words are worth.
Yep!
how big is the property?
No one has mentioned how harmful the BVCP update is to those in San Lazaro. San Lazaro and other mobile home parks have traditionally been zoned *only* for manufactured housing.
But, thanks to our new and extremely developer friendly “neighborhood 1” and “neighborhood 2” zoning designations, decades of careful planning have been eliminated and developers are now (likely) chomping at the bit to acquire any and all large properties.
San Lazaro is sadly only the first one who will fall victim to this, steamrolling effectively one of the last affordable forms of single family housing in lieu of expensive rentals that San Lazaro residents will not be able to afford (and if they do it will be at a lost of equity, their “own four walls” and through a byzantine affordable housing program).
Some things I would’ve liked to have seen covered in this report.
1- More info on the state law that allows residents to buy their mobile home park. I’m guessing they must meet or exceed any legit offer on the table.
2- If each pad is bringing in 1,000.00/month- can the residents form something like a condo association and attempt to gain private financing? If so, any county or state money would go a long way toward making that purchase happen. The land would be collateral. This is a lot of incentive for a bank.
3- Clearly city money cannot be used if this park wholly exists in the county. The lawsuits would fly and an injunction would be swift.
4- In the absence of knowing more about the buyer, we can only speculate. I would agree that the updated BVCP is creating incentive for this purchase by changing the zoning laws.
5- 120 days isn’t very long. The current owners have held this property for 40 years, that’s a long run in commercial real estate.