History and Background

The MHA works to preserve the Mapleton Mobile home park as a permanently affordable, resident controlled, owner-occupied community.

The MHA is incorporated as a non-profit corporation in the State of Colorado and has obtained a 501(c)3 tax exempt status with the Federal Government for the purpose of promoting low and moderate income housing in Boulder, Colorado. We have partnered with Thistle Community Housing, a Boulder, Colorado non-profit, also dedicated to preserving affordable housing, and have secured financing to purchase, improve and operate the land on which we already live, thereby providing permanent affordable housing for low and moderate income Boulder residents. We see Mapleton Mobile Home Park as a far-seeing model for all towns and cities, utilizing existing mobile homes to create a low-and-moderate income housing development.

Founded in late 1995, the MHA was formed to preserve the Park as permanently affordable, resident controlled, owner-occupied mobile home park. Within its first year of the MHA's existence, when the park was owned by a private individual, seventy-five percent of the residents of the Mapleton Mobile home park joined together to actively contribute to the development and refinement of the goal of resident control.

In January 2001, MHA partnered with Thistle Community Housing, also a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation, to purchase the Park from the interim owner, City of Boulder, adding the park to Thistle's Community Land Trust (CLT). In a CLT, land is held in trust by a community-based non-profit organization and, generally, each home owner leases the land beneath their home; in our case, MHA leases a contiguous body of land from Thistle under a 99-year, renewable lease, and manages the operations of the Park and the rental of homesites to individual resident home owners. A minimum of 80% of the homes are designated permanently affordable. Today, home-ownership automatically confers membership in the MHA (not the case in the early years). The MHA continues its goal of educating and advocating for mobile home owners throughout the park. The challenge of working together as a community is being met with tremendous energy and enthusiasm by Mapleton's talented residents.