DENVER — For the past two decades, the Capital City - MonteVista Mobile Home Park in Westwood has been home for Jorge Alberto Loya and his family. He loves everything about the place.
"Everything, everything, everything," he said. "I'm very comfortable here. I'm happy with my family here."
When the park was put up for sale two years ago, Alberto Loya and his neighbors, like Eduardo Castaneda, worried they'd be forced to leave their homes.
"Definitely displaced," said Castaneda, who has lived at the mobile home park for 17 years. "We hope to work together and make it so our community would own this land."
Thanks to some help from Justice for the People Legal Center, residents took action to become the new owners themselves.
Stefanie Fox with Sharing Connexion, the organization helping buy the property for the residents, said they've been working to get together the $11.5 million to buy the park.
On Monday, the Denver City Council approved a $2.6-million loan from the Department of Housing Stability to help Sharing Connexion buy the park. Sharing Connexion will serve as an interim owner to help until residents can buy the property themselves over the next few years.
"And the end goal for us and for the residents is to then, we transfer the ownership over to them at zero profit," Fox said.
After nearly two years of work, the sale of the mobile home park is nearly complete.
For Alberto Loya, it's a relief knowing he and his neighbors will soon truly own their own homes.
"That's what makes me the most happy, my kids," he said. "For myself it's whatever, but I have always worked for them. I want them to continue to be in the schools here. My daughter is studying to be a teacher. I want them to be here."
The sale of the mobile home park is expected to close at the end of the month. Then, residents will get to decide how they want to move forward, whether that's a community land trust or a co-op.
Both residents and their community partners said they hope what they're doing here can be an example and show other mobile home park residents they can become owners as well.
"Sharing Connexion actually was reached out to by other mobile home park owners when they heard we were doing this. So I think park owners, too, in the future could look to when they want to sell their properties, to sell them to their residents," Fox said. “We hope to just set an example and hopefully there’s more of these resident-owned communities and co-ops that will be formed over the years.”
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