Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

LAYTON — Nikkole Malan was on edge.

Days away from having to leave Cedarwood Mobile Home Park in Layton, she still wasn’t sure what sort of settlement offer she’d get from the owners of the complex. Reps from Boulder Ranch, the Provo-based entity that owns the park, announced last September that residents of 15 Cedarwood lots, including Malan, would have to leave by March 1 — next Tuesday — to accommodate redevelopment plans.

“It’s been extremely stressful, a very difficult situation,” Malan said. All the tenants at Cedarwood, which has around 70 lots, will eventually have to leave.

Michael McConkie, hired by Boulder Ranch to aid in negotiating compensation packages for the impacted tenants, said those efforts were progressing.

“Probably by the end of the day we’ll be finished,” he said Tuesday, without delving into specifics of the deals. Tenants from about half of the first batch of 15 lots are already gone.

Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

Even so, having to pull up roots is tough, and Malan, like others, suspects she’ll end up losing, no matter the compensation package. The money offered, she maintains, probably won’t cover the equity mobile home owners have built up in their units over the years. Many units can’t be moved because they’re too old, including Malan’s, and may have to be demolished.

“These people have lost their life savings. They’re walking away pretty ruined, frankly,” said Louise Brown, a Layton resident who’s advocated for the Cedarwood residents though she doesn’t live in the mobile home park. Per federal guidelines, mobile homes built before 1976 may not be moved, generally speaking.

Like Malan, Brown noted the equity the mobile homes have built up over the years, not likely to be covered, she thinks, with the compensation impacted residents will likely get. Then there’s the difficulty in finding housing as inexpensive as Cedarwood, where residents rent lots for around $500 per month.

Cedarwood Mobile Home park residents have known since last year that they’ll all eventually have to leave to accommodate the property owners’ plans to redevelop the land. The 14.8-acre parcel sits at at 189 S. Main St., just west of Interstate 15 and north of Layton Parkway, near the Layton FrontRunner station.

A Sept. 8 letter from Boulder Ranch, operated by McKay Winkel, said the first 15 tenants, including Malan, would have to leave by this coming Tuesday. Though the company hasn’t specified its long-term plans with the land, it also said everyone would eventually have to leave.

Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

“It is with much emotion that we announce to you that the mobile home park as a whole will soon be redeveloped,” reads last September’s letter. McConkie suspects the residents of the 55 or so lots not impacted by Tuesday’s deadline will be able to remain at least until the spring of next year, maybe longer.

At any rate, as the first deadline next week looms, reality is more concretely setting in and the nerves of many tenants are fraying, even among those who have more time. Mobile home parks typically cost less than traditional housing, including apartments, drawing from the lower economic strata. Having to suddenly vie for more expensive housing can be a financial stretch.

Mara Hopper lives with her brother and mother in a mobile home on one of the lots that has to be vacated by next week. She said late last week that she had been looking for an apartment to rent for the trio, so far without luck.

“We’re desperate to get out of here,” Hopper said, noting that her mother, Janelle Burbank, gets around in a wheelchair and relies on an oxygen tank. “They would take my mom out in her wheelchair and her oxygen and we’ll be homeless.”

When she bought the trailer a little over three years ago, paying $15,000, she understood she’d have at least 10 years to live in the park. “Less than four years later, we’re being evicted. We have to leave our three-bedroom home,” Hopper said.

Beyond that, finding accommodations as affordable as the mobile home park is next to impossible. One possibility, a one-bedroom apartment, costs $1,200 to $1,450 a month, a far cry from the $495 lot rental fee she’s paying at Cedarwood. Hopper jokes that someone may have to sleep in the bathtub if she, her mom and her brother go the apartment route.

“It’s not even comparable,” she said. “I am really hurt.”

Malan said she’ll probably move in with a friend, a stopgap plan. She’s studying nursing and worries that if she has to rent an apartment, it may keep her from continuing classes since she’ll probably have to get a job or two to cover the higher cost.

“I’m losing everything. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” she said. She can’t move her mobile home because, per federal guidelines, it’s too old. Like many others, she also worries the compensation she gets won’t cover what she’s invested in the unit.

Sergio Trujillo was hopeful the park owners would haul his unit, still movable, to Orem and cover the cost. That’s the closest place with an open spot for a double-wide unit, like his. Whatever the case, a formal deal hadn’t yet been reached.

“I’m tense. I don’t see anything yet,” a signed, written deal, that is, he said.

Mireya Gonzalez doesn’t yet have to move. She’s not part of the first phase of tenants. Still, she worries. She and her husband own two mobile homes, one they live in with their two kids and another that they rent out. “We invested everything,” she said.

At least one of the homes is too old to move and, mulling the prospect of possibly having to move by next year, she wants to be able to plan for the future. “We don’t know. We want a solution,” she said.

Vilma Puente, like Gonzalez, isn’t among the first phase of tenants who have to clear out by next Tuesday. But she worries, like Gonzalez. Her unit is too old to move and she wants the prospect of a future, not the uncertainty of having to find another place to live.

She bought her trailer home in 2017 for about $15,000. “If they want me to leave, they have to pay for it,” Puente said.

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