Sprengle also claims that ARC is putting more money into maintenance of the parks than the former owners. Many of his tenants would disagree.
"We have no playground for the children--they play in the street," says Jones. "The water and sewer system has decayed."
Tired of rent hikes and endless hassles with absentee landlords, many mobile dwellers around the state are searching for alternatives. A group of mobile-home owners in Fort Collins is working with the city to create a park controlled by the residents.
"There would be more dignity if people owned the dirt under their homes," says Chuck Dehn, who has lived in Fort Collins's Harmony Park for three years.
Earlier this year, the homeowners association at Harmony Park, which is owned by ARC, sued the company. The suit alleged that ARC had failed to notify the homeowners--who were trying to buy the park--before acquiring it for $18.4 million last November. The suit also claimed that ARC had hiked rents by $55 per month and had shifted the cost of water, sewer and trash service onto the residents with the intention of forcing longtime tenants to leave. But the suit was dropped after ARC agreed to reduce the rent increase to $45.
Unlike metro Denver officials, Dehn says the city of Fort Collins has been receptive to the idea of building a new mobile-home park. His group is now seeking a site for the proposed park. They want to make it a "co-housing" project, meaning residents would share child care and gather periodically for community meals and other activities.
"This is the last frontier for affordable housing," says Dehn. "This is the last opportunity our children will have for a starter home."
For now, most frustrated park residents have only one real option: to move out. But without a place to put their homes, the homes are nearly worthless, and people who thought they were getting a great deal on housing are discovering they may have made a huge mistake.
They also have to deal with the persistent stereotypes that mobile-home dwellers are slovenly hillbillies on wheels. Ever since Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz played two hapless cross-country travelers who backed their thirty-foot home into their suburban relatives' house in the movie The Long, Long Trailer, those who call home a mobile have had to live with the suspicion that they're buffoons or worse.
"The stereotype of the old trailer camp is everywhere you look," says Armstrong. "It's ridiculous." (However, even trailers can be chic if you are rich or famous. Several Hollywood big shots--including Tim Burton and Tom Hanks--are now collecting vintage 1950s trailers, especially the legendary silver Spartans, which feature wood ceilings and interiors. Burton just purchased his third Spartan as a gift for his wife.)
Bach has been around mobile homes long enough to remember when the Federal Heights area was known as "tinsel town" because of the way the silver trailers glittered in the sun. Since then, the mobile-home industry has been working hard to change its image by coining the term "manufactured housing" and adding amenities like gourmet kitchens and Jacuzzis.
But even the owners of these fancy new homes are still tenants--they have to deal with leases, overbearing managers and, in many cases, distant corporate owners.
"At least when I was a jerk as a manager, they could pick up the phone and call the owner," says Bach. "You had an opportunity to air your grievance to somebody who wasn't nameless and faceless. Of course, then you might find out the reason I was a jerk was that the owner was a jerk.
