GUNNISON — The whole concept of Ski Town Village is a bit of a mystery to the residents. Formerly named the Country Meadows, a website for the new owner contains only the address for the mobile home park, a phone number, a Denver street address, and a post office box in Cheyenne where rent checks are to be sent. The website describes the park being “on the highway to Mount Crested Butte town and ski area.” It doesn’t mention there are two communities and 33 miles between Ski Town Village and the Crested Butte Mountain Resort ski area.

The new name brings snickers and head shakes from residents whose timeworn mobile homes are linked by dirt roads riddled with immense potholes.

“This is not a ski town. As you can see, it is a meadow,” said Brad Di Vincenzo, a Western Colorado University student who is fixing up a trailer in the back of the park where a pasture stretches from his front yard. He bought the trailer for $40,000 two months before receiving the unexpected news about the sale of the park to a new owner, along with the accompanying rent increase.

Laughter about the new name dies out when Di Vincenzo and other residents of this 56-unit park talk about how, in spite of new state legislation to give more protection to Colorado mobile home park tenants, this park has fallen through the cracks. The 2020 Mobile Home Park Act and Mobile Home Park Oversight Program didn’t provide enough protection for the Country Meadows residents. Updates to that law in the Mobile Home Park Act Updates were recently signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis, but won’t go into effect until October.

Ski Town Village, which spreads for 8.7 acres, is an example of how hard it is to legislate rights for people who live very close to the bone with low wages, disabilities, old age and few or no options of other places to go.   

Read more on ColoradoSun.com.