It took an attorney willing to work for free and hop on a midnight phone call in the middle of her vacation.

It took two couples who had never met before performing remarkable acts of generosity and homeowners banding together while fending off occasional feelings of doubt and despair.

It took reams of paperwork, countless emails and endless hours of meetings and phone calls.

To preserve Swiss Village Mobile Home Park, it took a village.

A year after fearing the worst — that they would ultimately be forced to move — Swiss Village residents on Saturday celebrated the best possible outcome: They are now the owners of the land beneath their homes. In the process, Ouray retains a neighborhood that’s been dubbed the city’s original affordable housing.

One day after the Swiss Village Cooperative closed on the purchase of the 3-acre park at 1500 Oak St., more than 20 residents, elected officials and supporters gathered at the Ouray Community Center to exchange hugs, embrace tears of joy and gratitude and cut into a sheet cake that proclaimed “We own it!”

“The only thing we have is our home and our car,” Swiss Village Cooperative secretary Barb Kent. “If we couldn’t buy our mobile home park, we were going to have to leave and I didn’t know where we were going to go.”

Many of her neighbors shared that sentiment.

Swiss Village Mobile Home Park, shown here in the summer of 2024, went up for sale roughly a year ago. Erin McIntyre – Ouray County Plaindealer

State legislators have passed laws in the last five years aimed at boosting the rights of mobile home park residents, including giving them the first right of refusal to buy the park if it goes up for sale. But those protections are far from a guarantee of resident ownership, thanks to soaring real estate costs in Colorado and the challenges of scraping together sufficient capital and obtaining low-interest financing.

Swiss Village homeowners, though, were determined.

Within days of the park going on the market, they formed a cooperative, created a board of directors and joined an association of resident-owned communities.

Swiss Village Mobile Home Park resident Bob Angulo thanks Swiss Village Co-operative President Paula Damke for her work to help the cooperative to buy the park, at a party celebrating the residents’ purchase on Saturday. He’s holding a heart-shaped memento that reads “Neighbors are side by side friends.” Erin McIntyre – Ouray County Plaindealer

One of the first hurdles they cleared was convincing park owners Ross and Arlene Crawford to separate the property containing the 21 mobile homes from 13 acres of undeveloped land on the hillside above the park. Without treating those as two separate real estate transactions, Swiss Village likely wouldn’t have been able to find a lender willing to work with them.

The Crawfords ultimately made other concessions as well, settling on a $2.5 million sales price for the park that was halfway between their initial $2.8 million asking price and the cooperative’s initial $2.18 million offer.

But residents needed much more help, not only to buy the property but to keep monthly lot rents affordable.

It came in the form of a variety of public and private contributions. The state Department of Local Affairs offered an $880,000 grant, the maximum amount possible. The city of Ouray and Ouray County pitched in $200,000 and $50,000 respectively. The largest donation came from Cat and Barthold Lichtenbelt and Jay and Jackie Lauderdale, who agreed to give the cooperative a combined $900,000, citing the need to preserve Swiss Village as affordable housing.

“I don’t know what we would do without Jay and Jackie and Barthold and Cat,” Swiss Village Cooperative President Paula Damke said. “The support from you guys has just been incredible.”

The combined contributions helped the cooperative secure a 3.5% interest rate on their loan and ensured lot rents won’t go up for the time being. Park ownership will allow the cooperative to reinvest revenue from rent into property improvements.

Ben Moore, a financial analyst for Thistle, a Boulder-based nonprofit organization that helps mobile home parks transition from private ownership to resident-owned communities, said he’s never seen the level of private and government support that Swiss Village received. Swiss Village is now the 12th — and smallest — resident-owned community in Colorado.

He said he hopes to use Swiss Village as a template for efforts to secure deals for other resident-owned communities, especially in resort areas, where the cost of real estate could make philanthropic assistance essential.

There’s another important message in securing the long-term future of Swiss Village, which counts mental health workers and service industry and local government employees among its residents.

“What needs to be communicated is if you don’t have workforce housing, the community can’t continue to exist as it is,” Moore said.

Blair Kanis, a Ouray resident and attorney with the Colorado Poverty Law Project who agreed to do pro-bono work on behalf of Swiss Village, told residents they are part of a movement in Colorado.

“This is the beginning of a journey and you all are off to such a great start,” she said.