Residents worry as Boise-area mobile home parks fade away. This may be the next to go
J.R. Thompson is known as a bit of a handyman around Elm Grove Mobile Home Park near downtown Meridian.
The 43-year-old journeyman carpenter has lived in the park at the corner of Fairview Avenue and 3rd Street for two years while saving up to buy his own land. You can often find him making fixes for his neighbors around the park. “I’m kind of the guy that does everything for them, as far as maintenance stuff,” he told the Idaho Statesman while working on a portable carport for one of his neighbors.
Overall, he’s liked living there. “It’s not the prettiest to look at, but we all get along here,” Thompson said. Most importantly, he said, “Rent’s cheap.”
But he knows his stay is “temporary.”
The mobile home park — already listed as “permanently closed” online and no longer accepting new tenants — is slated to be redeveloped into a 90-unit apartment complex in the next few years, eliminating one of the most-affordable housing options in the city. Average rent in Meridian is almost $1,500 a month, according to Apartment List, while residents on the 40 lots in Elm Grove own their homes and pay $590 a month — for now. When the park is redeveloped, residents would be forced to relocate.
Neither Thompson nor the project’s developers know exactly when that will be.
What’s coming for Promenade Cottages
Mark Kelly of Lesley’s Mobile Home Estates LLC, a Hailey real estate company that owns Elm Grove and other mobile home parks in Idaho and Oregon, told the Idaho Statesman that he’s been working to secure the required city approvals for the redevelopment for nine years so far.
Called Promenade Cottages, the 7.6-acre development is planned to include the apartments in a two-story building, 30 single-family cottages, and two commercial buildings.
“The site has been a challenge for a long time,” Steve Arnold, a developer with A Team Land Consultants, the Boise real estate and development firm at the helm of the redevelopment, told the Meridian City Council when he presented the plan in May 2023. “We can get to something that definitely looks a lot better.”
Arnold said the single-family cottages in particular would offer something unique to the city and its housing market. They would be two- and three-bedroom homes on the smaller side. According to an application filed with the city, the cottages would have at least 1,250 square feet, not including garage space.
“The product that we’re building here has only been built once before,” Arnold told the City Council at the May 2023 public hearing. The blueprint is another of his developments, the Cottages at White Clouds, at the southwest corner of Fairview Avenue and Cloverdale Lane on the Boise side of Meridian’s border.
Arnold told the Statesman by phone that the cottages are more dense than other single-family homes and sit on smaller lots, keeping costs down for builders and future residents alike.
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He also told the City Council that he hoped bringing more multifamily housing onto the market would “help overall drive rent down.”
In May and June 2023 public hearings, members of the City Council seemed agreeable to the design plan and cottages concept. The main concern raised by council members and Meridian residents: What will happen to the people displaced by the development?
According to a development agreement approved by the city in December 2023, the cottages would be built first on a vacant lot to the south of the mobile home park, leaving residents unaffected. The multifamily component, which would replace the mobile home park, would come later. Improvements to two existing commercial buildings — including Idaho Pizza Co. — would come last.
Timing for these phases is dictated by market conditions as well as permitting processes with the city, Kelly told the Statesman in a phone interview. Kelly noted that interest rates remain high, even as the Federal Reserve dropped rates again last month.
“We’re in uncharted waters as far as the financing goes these days,” Kelly said.
Kelly’s company has a loan on the property that Kelly said will mature this summer, after which point additional financing would need to be secured for the redevelopment. The mobile home park is collateral on this preexisting loan, with rents providing revenue for the company to pay back its lender, and Kelly said the money from this loan would not go toward the new development.
In an email to the Statesman, Kelly wrote, “The age of the park and condition of the infrastructure warrant replacement, and it makes it very difficult financially to sustain the park in perpetuity.”
Kelly said on the phone that he expects it will be three to four years before Elm Grove residents will have to move, but it could be longer.
Mobile homes options shrinking in the Valley
Zoe Ann Olson, the executive director of Intermountain Fair Housing Council, is concerned when she sees mobile home parks shutter in the Treasure Valley, often to make way for new development. In an email to the Statesman, she wrote that these homes are “some of the last affordable, unsubsidized housing we have.”
Olson said the council is aware of at least 10 park closures since 2023 in Garden City, Boise, Meridian and Canyon County. According to previous Statesman reporting, 21 parks have closed since 2011 in Garden City alone, including Dee Mar Mobile Home Park, which was vacated last year for a planned five-story, 90-unit luxury apartment complex.
Rapid growth, increasing demand for apartments and rising land prices may contribute to property owners’ decisions to redevelop mobile homes into more profitable units. According to the Ada County Assessor’s Office, the total value of the property slated for Promenade Cottages — including the mobile home park, the commercial lot to its north, and the vacant lot to its south — is assessed at over $7.3 million. In 2020, it was worth $4.1 million.
“Sadly, we are losing mobile home in large numbers,” Olson said, noting that closures often displace individuals on limited or fixed incomes, families with children, people with disability, and veterans.
Even subsidized housing in the area can be more expensive than mobile homes. At Meridian’s first affordable housing complex, which opened in November, qualifying tenants pay between $790 and $955 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.
“We can’t afford to live anywhere else but here,” Tiana Hunter, who lives in Elm Grove with her husband and pets, told the Idaho Statesman. “And now, most of us can’t even barely afford to live here.”
Hunter said she’s faced rent hikes at the mobile home park in recent months, the biggest one of about $90 earlier this summer. When she moved to the park eight years ago, she estimates her rent was about $390 a month, $200 less than it is today.
Thompson said he’s received a notice from the park’s property management that rent would be increased every six months.
Olson noted that mobile homes can be a precarious form of housing. “Homeowners who own their mobile or manufactured home usually don’t own the land ... so they are at risk of eviction, displacement, home depreciation as it ages, and it becomes more expensive to move,” she said.
‘None of us have anywhere else to go’
As options for mobile homeowners in the Treasure Valley diminish, remaining mobile home parks can fill up quickly, making it even more difficult for residents displaced by developments to find new a spot for their homes. That is, if they can move their homes at all.
Many of the homes in Elm Grove and other parks across the state were built before 1976 and would require significant upgrades to bring them up to current standards before they could be moved. These upgrades can be costly and often exceed the worth of the home. Even newer homes and RVs in poor condition can be expensive to haul to a new spot.
Already, at least three of the lots in Elm Grove have been vacated, the homes on them abandoned.
Hunter’s home abuts two of those abandoned homes. She estimates that only two or three of the mobile homes in the park are in good-enough condition to be moved when the time comes. She said she doesn’t know where she would go, even if she were able to move her home.
“None of us have anywhere else to go,” she said.
According to a memo Kelly sent the city in June 2023, the park contains 15 RVs, 17 mobile homes built before 1976, and eight mobile homes built since 1976.
‘Softening the blow’
When the Meridian City Council approved Kelly’s rezoning request for the development in June 2023, it did so with a few conditions.
City Council President Luke Cavener told the Statesman in an interview that the council had a “very narrow pathway” in terms of what it could require, given the property owner’s right to develop the land.
“The council was really sympathetic to that neighborhood, and that the realities that, frankly, whatever the decision the council made or not, at some point in the next few years, those residents were going to be displaced,” Cavener said.
So, his goal was to use the rezoning request as a way to “help soften the blow and provide greater transition for those residents ... to be as minimally invasive as possible,” he said.
The agreement that the developer and the city reached in 2023: The developer would not build on the park for at least four years. After four years, when the developer submits a final plat application for the second phase, the developer would provide notice to residents with affordable housing resources and information. Another year would pass before the developer could submit building-permit applications, putting the earliest possible date for redevelopment of the park sometime in the end of 2028.
The city also granted a conditional-use permit allowing the mobile homes to remain on the property, despite its new zoning, until redevelopment.
The development agreement also stipulates that when the property owner’s loan switches to a fixed rate — which is expected to happen in the next six to 12 months — the developer will inventory the homes and offer to move any RVs or mobile homes built since 1976 to another of Kelly’s parks if spaces are available. Kelly’s limited-liability company that owns Elm Grove also owns parks in Eagle, Twin Falls and Kimberly, and another of his companies recently completed a park in Ontario.
The agreement did not require the developer to aid the owners of the 17 homes in the park that were built before 1976 and cannot be moved.
A 2023 letter from Elm Grove management to its residents, also filed with the city, stated, “Our goal is to make this transition as smooth as possible for each and every one of you.”
“We understand that moving can be challenging, and we are here to offer support and assistance in any way we can,” the letter read.
In a phone interview with the Statesman, Arnold, the developer, said the time for residents to move is still “years down the road.” For now, he’s focused on the development’s first phase: the single-family cottages on the vacant lot south of the park. That phase will also involve some improvements to the property, including extending 3rd Street and making adjustments to allow utilities to service the vacant lot, which sits on a floodplain.
The final plat for the first phase was approved by the city in November, and Arnold said he’s now waiting on construction-plan approval as well, which he anticipates receiving in the next week or two. “We’re hoping to start turning some ground in early spring,” he said.
Elm Grove residents grapple with uncertainty
Hunter and Thompson say the last they heard from the developer was a flier about a year and a half ago informing them of the four-year timeline.
“About every six months, there’s a rumor that they’re going to build on the vacant lot,” Hunter said.
Hunter said she’s concerned about the lack of information she’s received, noting that the property management company changed a few months ago and that she’s had difficulty getting hold of them, even when a water line froze and burst on a neighboring lot in the park. She voiced other concerns about conditions in the park, including the vacated homes and abandoned belongings being left on the site.
“We’ve had people squat in the fifth wheel,” she said, gesturing. “We’ve had people squat in that trailer.”
Hunter also pointed to a road pocked with large potholes and noted that the vacant lot to the south of the property, overgrown with weeds, could pose a fire hazard.
Even worse is the feeling of uncertainty of not knowing when she will receive the notice to vacate.
“I’m a human being,” she said. “I deserve to know what’s going on, because this affects my life in a big way.”
In an email to the Statesman, Kelly wrote, “Hearing that the residents of Elm Grove MHP would appreciate addition communication, we are happy to put out a biannual update as to where we are with the redevelopment efforts and will improve our communication.”
Kelly also emphasized that when the time for redevelopment comes, residents will get a one-year written notice to move out. “We are hopeful that the year is adequate timing for all current residents to find an alternative home,” he wrote.
Thompson, the carpenter, told the Statesman that like Thompson, he also doesn’t know where he’ll go once he has to leave. He said his goal is “buying a piece of land and building a small, little home for me.”
“That’s still my goal, but as far as what exactly I’m doing, I really don’t know yet,” he said. “Probably time I figured that out.”
