Residents of an Arapahoe County mobile home park claim their management company is "taking advantage," not treating them "like human beings"

UPDATE JULY 19, 2023: A little more than a week after publication of this article, the company responded to CBS News Colorado with thorough written statements regarding the residents' complaints. To read the company's full explanations, click here. 

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A Colorado state agency confirms to CBS News Colorado it is investigating complaints of unfair and exploitative practices at a mobile home park in Arapahoe County. 

Activists claim the alleged issues there are an example of a problematic trend happening to mobile home parks across the country. They say large private equity companies are buying up mobile home parks, raising rent prices, and implementing costly policies, which they say take advantage of the people who live there, and critics say the same is happening at Foxridge Farm in northeastern Aurora. 

Residents say some people at Foxridge Farm are having to pay up to $3,800 a month in rent.

"We all have to gather together to make a change in Colorado, not just in this park, because this abuse is happening in every park in Colorado," says Ericka Almeida, who has lived at Foxridge Farm for more than three years.  

She says she loves her neighbors, but the park's management company — Ascentia — has made it tough for her and her neighbors to enjoy living here. 

She has a variety of complaints regarding the park, from the poor upkeep of the park's streets and common areas, to what she says are arbitrary and unfair new policy changes. 

She says the company has started charging $5 a day for overnight visitors, which she says adds up fast for people like her who have adult children.   

"Every day they have something new that they come up with," Almeida said. "We just feel like even in jail, they have more rights to have visitation than us."

Her concerns don't stop there. She also says the company has implemented prohibitive new parking policies, in which the company has eliminated on-street parking, and instituted a monthly charge for a parking lot on the far end of the park in its place. She also claims the company has been towing cars without 24-hour notice.  

Other residents say the parking policy changes are frustrating. 

"I don't really appreciate it," said Nelta Sinka, a resident who has lived in the park for decades. "It makes me feel like they're just wanting us to leave, and as a senior they just keep raising the rent." 

Some activists feel Ascentia is exploiting many of the undocumented immigrants and older people who live here, who have few other housing options to turn to.  

"This is actually sometimes the only way folks can own their home, sometimes because of documentation status, because they can't apply for mainstream loans, they can't apply for public housing," explains Andrea Chiriboga-Flor, the legal program director for 9to5 Colorado, a nonprofit that has been working with mobile home park residents struggling across the state. "Paying $3,800 for a home in the middle of nowhere... it's a lot of money, but they know that people are willing to pay, because they just need a stable place to stay."

CBS News Colorado emailed and called Ascentia multiple times for comment, but has not received a response. 

However, in an email to residents this spring, the company said the parking policy changes are to provide a "safer situation" and better access for emergency vehicles. 

Chiriboga-Flor says she doesn't buy that explanation, adding that residents at the park have expressed "they feel like they can't just live here in peace." 

Living in peace is all these residents hope for.  

"I just think that they're just taking advantage of people, and I mean, most of us can't afford to move," said Lana Jackson, who has lived in the park since the 1970s. "Treat us more like human beings."

The state's mobile home park oversight program says it is investigating the concerns at Foxridge Farm, and according to documents pertaining to the investigation CBS News Colorado obtained, the investigation could take at least a few more weeks before it is complete.  

The program has only been up and running since 2020. According to its annual report, the program has received and resolved more than 200 complaints about parks across the state since 2020. Of all of those complaints, only nine notices of violation have been issued.