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“I love it,� she says of Jeffco Estates on Jeffco Boulevard, just down the road from the Fox School District. “It’s a great neighborhood.�

The mobile home park has been there since 1968, four years before Arnold incorporated. Now its owners are worried the city is trying to force it out.

That’s what they allege in a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year, saying the city is trying to “regulate Jeffco Estates out of existence.�

At issue are the city’s , which have been in place since 1977. Because mobile home parks in the city pre-date the regulations, they are grandfathered into the law as nonconforming. That means they can continue to exist. But if they try to make changes — such as bring in modern mobile homes to replace the older ones — they would trigger the new regulations, which are much more restrictive.

That puts landowners in an impossible place, says Ryan Hotchkiss. He’s the CEO of , the Maryland-based company that bought Jeffco Estates as part of a larger purchase of multiple mobile home parks in 2021.

Hotchkiss’ company has filed for a variety of permits in the past couple of years to either improve existing homes or replace old ones. All of them have been denied, according to the lawsuit.

“We can’t even maintain the existing occupancy and the homes that are there once the existing person leaves. It’s a fairly insidious method of zoning,� Hotchkiss said in an interview. “Their statute is drafted to pretty much ensure that mobile home parks are slowly strangled out of existence.�

That’s not how Arnold’s city administrator, Bryan Richison, sees it. He says the city is willing to work with Jeffco Estates or other mobile-home park owners who want to modernize their properties within the context of the zoning regulations.

“I don’t think it’s accurate to say we want to get rid of them,� Richison says. “There is a path for them to bring in new trailers. We are willing to do some kind of agreement so they can phase it in.�

It’s clear in court records that Jeffco Estates and the city are not on the same page. The mobile home park’s owners first filed a lawsuit in state court last year, alleging the city didn’t follow its own regulations in denying permits for replacement homes or repairs. That lawsuit is set for trial in February 2024.

At some point after the lawsuit was filed, the city issued a nuisance violation on one of the homes, saying it was condemned and needed to be removed. Jeffco Estates applied for a permit to renovate the home, but it was denied. That property stands out as an eyesore in a park with well-kept homes, albeit older ones.

In March, Jeffco Estates filed a federal lawsuit seeking to declare the city’s zoning regulations unconstitutional. The suit claims the regulations take away the rights of the owner of the property and the individual home owners.

That’s where Seman comes in. A few years back, she decided to invest some of her money in mobile homes. She bought a few — all in Jeffco Estates — and sold them for a profit. Then she bought three more, where she and her two grown sons now live. She thinks the city is trying to push them out.

“They think we’re all riff-raff,� Seman says. “Mobile home stigma is real.�

There are 95 occupied units in Jeffco Estates, with 85 of them owned by residents. The others are rentals. The tree-lined park, which has a playground and basketball hoop, has 150 total lots. They are arranged in six rows, slowly sloping down the hill away from Jeffco Boulevard. The park owners would like to put in larger concrete pads to bring in newer, larger mobile homes.

The plans are on hold as the city and the park’s owner battle in court over where personal property rights end, and where city regulation begins. The city is trying to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing its regulations are on firm ground.

“If somebody owns something and they want to make it better, why should the city or anybody else have the right to stop them?� Seman asks.

She says mobile home living is particularly good for her family in tough economic times, when apartment rents are rising. She hopes the owners of the park win the court battle.

Because of the city regulations, the mobile home owners in Jeffco Estates don’t believe they could relocate to any of the other parks in Arnold.

“If they close this thing down,� Seman says, “we wouldn’t know where we are going to go.�