🏘️ New view at Ponderosa mobile home park

City of Boulder seeks to redevelop a mobile home park without pricing out its residents. As builders break ground, some remain skeptical.

Kathy Schlereth, 67, who has lived in the Ponderosa mobile home park in North Boulder for 22 years, stood watching a backhoe claw out the foundation for a proposed triplex across her street. She’s used to watching hang gliders soar above the mountains from this vantage, not the churn of construction machinery. 

“I’m still not happy about them building houses right next to me and blocking off what’s left of my mountain view,” Schlereth told the Boulder Reporting Lab. “But, you know, what can you do?” 

The construction, which began in May, marks a milestone in a city-backed redevelopment project for the mobile home park that has been decades in the making. The project has drawn support from residents who see it as a needed investment in the community, and concern from others wary of the city’s intentions amid fears of being priced out.

For residents in the park, which was first settled in the 1950s, views of open space have long been replaced by multi-story homes, as demand for housing drove development north. Since the 1990s, the city had been trying to purchase the park in order to prevent it from being sold to developers likely to raze the properties for more profitable real estate.

It finally purchased the park in 2017, and has since used federal grant money to invest more than $3 million to replace water and sewer lines, install internet cables, upgrade gas lines and convert dirt roads to blacktop. Prior to the city’s purchase, officials documented fire code violations, leaking water lines, drinking water quality violations, and sewer system backups. 

The city is now seeking to replace the park’s approximate 48 mobile homes, one by one, with carriage houses atop garages, along with single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes built by Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that runs a volunteer-led home construction program. 

The new homes will be deed-restricted as affordable. And the city has said the new construction is for Ponderosa residents – but that anyone who wants to stay in their own mobile homes can. In order to be eligible for the new homes, the city has told residents they will have to volunteer in building them or accumulate “sweat equity” hours participating in other ways.  

What makes the program different from others in Boulder is the financing. To help residents afford the new homes, the city is planning to front more than $3 million to pay for zero-interest loans aimed at helping residents cover their mortgage. This financial assistance model, never before tested in Boulder, could end up being expanded across the city to address the housing crisis, according to Kurt Firnhaber, the director of Boulder Housing and Human Services. 

“In most communities like this, the first thing that happens is a bulldozer shows up and it clears the whole site,” Firnhaber told the Boulder Reporting Lab. “[Our] approach is unique because we started with the people — not the bulldozers.” 

But whether the city can keep the Ponderosa residents there and avoid long-term gentrification will be a tall task.

After two of its teenage dancers were displaced by the Marshall Fire, a Louisville dance company closes a tumultuous season with one last performance at the Dairy Arts Center

Louisville teenager Abby Zuccaro was in Maine with her family for the holidays when she learned that her home had been lost in the Marshall Fire. As the shocked 15-year-old absorbed the news over the coming hours and days, wondering what remained of her old life back home in Boulder County, one question cut deep: “When am I going to be able to go back to dance?”

Zuccaro, who started taking classes at Louisville’s Danse Etoile Ballet six years ago, wasn’t the only member of her company affected by the Dec. 30 wildfire that destroyed more than 1,000 other residences — and she wasn’t the only one who found herself anxious to get back on the dancefloor after the disaster.

Leila Petty, 17, whose home ultimately survived but suffered damage that displaced her family long-term, says her mind was similarly occupied in the aftermath of the inferno. She had been staying with her grandparents in Alabama when her dad texted a photo of smoke creeping over the hill near their Louisville home. Like Zuccaro, Petty says her initial disbelief quickly gave way to the same urgent question.

“I wanted a sense of normalcy, but my parents said it was never going to be normal,” she remembers. “I really just wanted to get back in the studio.”

And that’s exactly what the pair did. 

How close is Boulder to providing a guaranteed income program?

A program to offer a steady stream of monthly income for people struggling to make ends meet could be on the horizon in Boulder. It would give low-income residents $500 every month, with no conditions or restrictions. 

There’s currently no funding to run the program, but city staff are asking the Boulder City Council to approve $3 million to fund a pilot version out of the city’s $20.15 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money, designed to help communities during the pandemic. 

In March, city council approved $250,000 of that for the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) to design the project. That money came from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) as well as ARPA.

A vote by council on the rest of the funding is expected this summer, as city staff continue to incubate the proposal. There’s so far general, though not unanimous support among councilmembers, albeit with questions and reservations raised. 

The guaranteed income program is part of a nationwide trend by mayors looking to increase social programs for low-income residents, in the wake of the success of a pilot program in Stockton, California, and growing economic disparities brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs piloted a program with 125 randomly selected residents in 2019.  There are now at least 35 such mayor-led programs operating in cities big and small across the nation, as part of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a national advocacy network. Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett is a member of the network. 

If approved, Boulder’s program, along with Denver’s, would be the first of their kind in Colorado.