(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, the conclusion of our series on mobile homes asks what's next for residents in one of the last forms of affordable housing.

(Mark) Mobile home parks are getting lots of investment, but they're not necessarily getting the right type of investment.

So we need to find ways to invest in this vital source of affordable housing.

(Tom) Learn how new border wall construction might affect wildlife at the San Rafael Valley.

(Ross) The Nature Conservancy called this the last shortgrass prairie in Arizona.

And it's been farmed for maybe a hundred years.

(Tom) And go behind the scenes of a classic Arizona oddity.

(Cynthia) Nobody would even think about doing something like that in Arizona.

Where it's so hot.

Hi, and welcome to Arizona Illustrated I'm Tom McNamara.

First up, for decades, mobile and manufactured home parks have provided stability for working families and retirees and those who've established community here in Southern Arizona.

Now in the final part of our series, Mobile Homes, the Last Affordable Housing, we look at what's at stake and what's possible for mobile home residents.

But as new investors buy up parks and raise rents, residents are organizing to protect those neighborhoods from grassroots advocates to park managers who believe in doing right by their tenants.

It's a story about resilience, reform, and restoring hope.

[Ominous Music] (Yana) For seniors on fixed incomes, working families that have called Tucson home for generations, and those just settling into their desert life.

Mobile homes remain Arizona's most affordable housing.

When mobile home parks become unlivable it's not just residents who lose.

It's an entire ecosystem of housing at risk.

[Droning Music] (Mark) We have in the United States the American dream of home ownership, right?

And we have a whole system of financial supports to basically subsidize home ownership.

But manufactured housing has been kind of left out.

For folks who have low incomes, housing is a real challenge in Tucson, despite housing prices perhaps being lower overall in the city.

The percent of people in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution that are housing cost burdened is higher in Tucson than it is in Phoenix.

It's higher than the state average and it's higher than the national average.

(Cheyenne) Affordable housing isn't just the unit itself.

It's the ability to pay for all of the infrastructure that maintain and have that space actually be a livable environment.

(Yana) What's happening now didn't come out of nowhere.

Experts say the system was built in a way that treated these homes differently from the start.

And ongoing gaps in how the landlord-tenant act is enforced mean residents are still paying the price.

(Mark) This was a housing type that was not treated as housing.

It was treated as a form of vehicle actually.

And so you just played like a vehicle registration tax.

So there was no property taxes associated with this.

And so it was very cheap, right, from that perspective.

But it also brought all of the "burdens" of housing, right, which is people who need roads, who need schools, who need all kinds of services.

And so sometimes municipalities came to see this type of housing as not paying its own way and being a burden.

And so there was often this effort to sort of push it to the margins, to push it out of its borders so that they would not be responsible for providing services to this rapidly growing population.

[Droning Guitar Music] (Kimberly) It breaks my heart.

They're just buying them and they know we're sitting ducks, that it costs too much to move them and we're going to stay here regardless until you finally take our whole paycheck.

And we have no money left.

(Mark) Manufactured housing parks are a sweetheart investment.

[Laughs] Oftentimes they're seen as being a relatively low investment way to produce returns.

Because essentially what you do is you can be a landlord without being responsible for all of the upkeep of the home, right?

You're actually not responsible for the condition of the home at all.

There's many ways in which it's seen as a much more passive form of commercial real estate ownership.

(Raye) There are still parks that are owned by individuals and by families who have been long-term in relationship with the residents who are not jacking up the rent every month.

We don't hear from them very often.

And they're not the ones who call.

The ones who call are the ones who are saying, like, how can I extract the most amount of money from these residents?

(Yana) There are more than 600 mobile home parks in Pima County.

Some are large corporate owners like Skyline Real Estate, which manages more than 60 parks across the country.

At least 25 of those are in Arizona, where management says residents benefit from a professional long-term owner that reinvests into the park.

Others are mom-and-pop shops with 30-some mobile home spaces, like the one run by park owner Al Velez.

Resident experiences differ from park to park.

But without stronger accountability, those residents have no assurances of stable rents or fair resolution of disputes.

[Wheelchair rolling] [Dogs barking] [Keys unlocking door] (Al) I bought the place broken down about eight years ago.

(Yana) What was the state of the park?

It was broken down.

[Laughs] Out of 36 units, only six units were rented.

The rest were broken windows, broken doors, needed something.

[Taking keys out of door] [Wheelchair rolling] People don't want to hire me because I'm in a wheelchair.

This gives me a job to do.

This gives me responsibility.

This gives me respect.

I take payments, I work with people, I give people an opportunity.

Onneita!

-Yeah She's one of my longest tenants.

Yeah, you can come out.

My tenants pay me rent, and I need the unit to work for what they're paying me.

You know, they need to get what they're paying for.

I started out in one of the smaller campers down there, and I was just moving forward, and he's like, "Go check that one out."

You know, like, we're a community here, you know?

This is our home, and we're always looking out for, like, I got family down here.

(Al) For me, I need to make sure that my tenants are comfortable.

It's a business relationship, you know?

They're paying me for something, and I'm giving them something.

So any issues that they have with their unit, you know, I try to fix.

(Yana) Organizers are thinking big about what needs to change to make manufactured home parks stable and bustling communities.

They want a regulatory agency that deals specifically with mobile homes, for master meter parks to be converted to direct utility customers, and a pathway for more resident-owned communities.

(Raye) We need real systemic change, so we work with residents and also with policy makers, with city and county staff, with the Department of Public Health.

We come together to try to work on tangible solutions to some of the issues that people are facing.

(Imelda) De lo que tengo claro, el problema no es de la comunidad El problema es sistemático.

Las condiciones de viviendas son caras.

La dispensa, la luz, la renta, todo es cara.

El salario sigue siendo bajo y la renta sigue subiendo, entonces esta desproporción entre una cosa y la otra es lo que te lleva al desalojo.

No porque la persona no tenga la capacidad o no pueda costar vivienda, la vivienda está fuera de nuestra alcance.

(Mark) Mobile home parks are getting lots of investment, but they're not necessarily getting the right type of investment that is actually improving the housing.

So, we need to find ways to invest in this vital source of affordable housing, where the return comes in the form of something other than profits or increased rents.

(Raye) We want there to be more resident-owned communities, more non-profit-owned communities, more communities that are owned by community land trusts, where really the long-term health and housing is the center, not some private equity firm making a bunch of money.

(Yana) In mobile home parks across Pima County, the troubling patterns of predatory management, crumbling infrastructure, and residents fighting to stay are coming up against a new future, one where residents, advocates, and officials are rethinking what housing can look like for southern Arizona communities.

(Kimberly) These parks are beautiful places to live if the management agrees and wants to be there.

For 40 years, we had great relations with our managers and a great place to live.

(Mark) This is a vital source of affordable housing, right?

If we're concerned about homelessness and housing inadequacy, then this is where we need to focus attention.

(Raye) When it's done without such an extractive process, it can be quite affordable.

And not just affordable, but a place where people are checking in on their neighbors, a place where you can have multi-generations living next door to one another and supporting one another in really vibrant and thriving communities.

[Cheerful Music] (Miryam) You can't stay quiet and suffer, and you're paying your bills.

I think that's the main, you know, speaking out for your community.

I remodeled my whole trailer to the way I liked it.

So it's kind of hard to say, "Hey, I want to sell it," or, you know, leave, because I actually fixed it the way I wanted.

All the schools are really close, and my mom's really close.

(Kimberly) I love the community atmosphere.

I have a beautiful garden and patio.

I put about $40,000 renovating the bathrooms.

My mom's right there.

I really enjoy living here.

My dream is to have a house out in the country.

(Roseanne) I just got to try to get my my dreams of having my little garden, my home where nobody can throw me off of it, you know, because it's ours.

We own it.

(Mark) Yes, we need to build new affordable housing, but we also need to preserve the affordable housing that we have.

And I don't think we can take for granted that if we don't start making investments in this housing, umm that it will always be there.

(Roseanne) At my age, I'm still trying to fight in life and still trying to do that.

I may live in this, but it's something.

I have to settle for what I have and then go down the line and get my dream.

(gentle music) (gentle music) Across Tucson and Southern Arizona, mobile home residents are standing up not just for their homes, but for their right to live with dignity and security.

Their fight is about more than housing.

It's about preserving one of the last affordable options left and reimagining what a fair and sustainable future for Arizona families can look like.

For more on the project and to learn more about housing advocacy in our state, visit azpm.org and arizonaluminaria.org You can also find the entire series as a standalone documentary on our YouTube page.

Last week we took you to the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge to see how border wall construction is affecting an ancient spring system there.

Well now, AZPM's Danyelle Khmara takes us to the San Rafael Valley to look at construction that's sparking similar concerns along one of the last unwalled ecosystems along that Arizona border with Mexico.

♪ PENSIVE GUITAR MUSIC (Danyelle) Myles Traphagen has spent the last several decades in the Arizona borderlands working to restore habitat for wildlife that move between the United States and Mexico.

In that time he's documented how a new border wall cuts off wildlife pathways and affects local water tables.

New border wall such as the construction taking place in the San Rafael Valley and the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River.

♪ PENSIVE GUITAR MUSIC (Myles) So we are right in the center of the San Rafael Valley and this road will ultimately take us down to the U.S.-Mexico border and we are paralleling the Santa Cruz River.

It starts in the United States in Arizona and it flows from north to south and it enters Sonora where it crosses near the former town of Lochiel.

There's just a few houses there now, and it spends about 20 miles down south of the border, makes a U-turn and then it re-crosses the border east of Nogales near a place called Kino Springs.

And then ultimately the Santa Cruz River flows past Tucson and into the Gila and then that finally empties into the Colorado River.

These grasslands are blue grama grasslands, cane beardgrass, these are all grasses that are native to the Great Plains.

Pronghorn antelope and prairie dogs, you know, all of that is here.

This entire basin we're in, in the San Rafael Valley ultimately feeds the flow of the Santa Cruz River.

This is the beginning of the construction process and they're setting up the logistics and the structure for building the border wall.

(Danyelle) Can you just start by telling us where we are and what we're looking at right now?

(Myles) Yeah, we're here at the Santa Cruz River.

This is a very crucial wildlife migration corridor in what we call the Sky Islands region and the Sky Islands being these mountains that rise above these valleys of grass.

A good majority of the Sky Islands have been walled off and this is one of the last remaining wildlife corridors.

You know, you ask yourself, "Why are they coming here?"

Well, it's water.

- Is this a region where people hunt at all?

- This is a very well-known hunting area and there's two species of deer here, mule deer and white-tailed deer.

So this has been prized by, you know, sportsmen for a long time.

Border walls will ultimately fragment populations and the most likely scenario is that we're going to see a reduction in abundance and diversity of wildlife.

- How close is the border construction that's happening right now?

- I think it's around five to seven miles to the east of us.

They're staging right in the very center of the valley.

(Danyelle) And they're planning on coming in this direction?

- Both directions.

They're going to work east and west.

(Danyelle) And do you know like the distance that they're planning on going on either side?

(Myles) It's a total of 27 miles across the valley.

(Danyelle) And do we have any data on what that impact will be?

Do we have any idea what it might look like?

Because of the REAL ID Act of 2005, the Secretary of Homeland Security can waive all laws for the construction of border barriers.

And this means the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species, Native American Graves Protection Act, eagles, everything.

We're undertaking these projects without any means of knowing what kind of impacts we're going to make on our environment.

(Danyelle) And can you just say a little bit more about why border walls take so much water?

- When they build these walls, which now are 30 feet tall, they have to put a concrete footer in the ground.

And usually that's about six feet deep and about three feet wide.

So in order to make that concrete, they need to drill wells.

So they are drilling a couple wells east of here.

And what happened at the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge and the San Bernardino Valley is any indicator, they were pulling out on the order of 700,000 gallons per day.

You know, multiply that times 900 days of this contract, and that's a phenomenal amount of water.

♪ GUITAR MUSIC FADES (Ross) We're over the Santa Cruz River right now.

And at this spot, there's a very small flow of water.

You can't hear the water, it's trees that we're hearing.

But this is what's left of the stream float in the river.

[ WATER SPLASHES ] (Danyelle) Ross Humphreys is a conservationist and cattle rancher raising angus beef south of Patagonia, in Arizona's high desert country bordering Mexico, his property is the north end of a rich ecological site that is home to many plants and animals on the endangered species list.

(Ross) And here's a brag.

In 2021, we were chosen as the certified angus beef producer of the year nationwide.

(Danyelle) Wow, that's incredible.

And that's what I said, how did you do that?

I'm in the middle of nowhere.

The Nature Conservancy called this the last shortgrass prairie in Arizona.

And it's been farmed for maybe a hundred years.

There are quinces, pear trees, apple trees, and black raspberry.

The Smithsonian's working all around the country looking at endangered plants, orchids in particular.

And the Desert Botanical Gardens collected plants, seeds, and fluorescence here the first year I was out with them.

(Danyelle) Can we get to see the orchids from here?

- We need to walk out into there.

- Should we do that?

- Sure, sure, sure.

(Ross) Let's see.

I'm gonna keep you out of the deep water.

- Okay, good.

(Ross) In the middle we have a soil moisture sensor and a satellite transmitter that sends the soil moisture data to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

(Danyelle) So how rare is this orchid?

It's unique to this site and one other in this county.

(Danyelle) I see it's growing here in this really marshy area.

(Ross) This is the Cienega, it's been here for a bazillion years.

And the water has flowed the whole time we've been here.

And it supports lots of plants, lots of animals.

Cattle have been grazing here since the 1800s, at least.

♪ COUNTRY GUITAR MUSIC PLAYS (Danyelle) Sounds like there's a whole ecosystem here that's unique to this region.

- For sure, for sure.

- And how close are we right now to the border?

- We are about two miles from Mexico right now.

- How do you think this new border wall construction will be felt in this region?

- My concern is water.

The political question is somebody else's question.

I'm not in that game.

(Danyelle) Yeah.

(Ross) My concern is the water.

Because if it dries, you could lose the orchid, you could lose the mexican green garter snake, you could lose Huachuca springsnail, you could lose a bunch of other goodies.

Plus our neighbors have already had their wells go dry.

We have one neighbor with three wells, two of which are dry at his house.

- And that's just like been recent?

- This summer.

Yeah.

And he's 1500 feet from the border.

- So it was running dry before they started the border wall construction?

- We've had three years of the long drought and two of his wells went dry.

- Is he concerned with the construction?

- Of course.

- Yeah.

(Ross) At the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge and at Baquito Springs, they pumped the water that got pumped to make concrete, pumped those properties dry.

This spring can go dry.

And you don't know till you did.

♪ SOLEMN WESTERN GUITAR ♪ WESTERN GUITAR MUSIC CONTINUES ♪ (Myles) What struck me, and I've seen a lot of border wall construction and is when I looked to the South in Mexico, I saw Sierra Azul.

And I know that there are jaguars there and that that's the northernmost breeding population of ocelot.

And now I'm also looking at some locations in the Huachucas where I know jaguars have been photographed and ocelots.

And it's been the first time that I've stood in one location and actually been able to see the connectivity diminish.

I can see all in one space.

It's like I can literally see a mountain peak and a valley on both sides and the start of a border wall that's gonna cut those animals off.

If you've ever driven along I-10 toward Phoenix, then you have passed or maybe even stopped at a curious little location called the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch.

Well next we show you how this three-generation family-owned business has become much more than an ostrich ranch.

♪ WESTERN MUSIC (Danna) You know what this place really is about?

This is a place for families to come all ages.

It doesn't matter if you're two or one hundred two, it's fun for everybody.

And they get to come in here, they get to forget their troubles for a little bit of time.

They get to enjoy family with no electronics.

You see someone come in and they got a [ GROWLING SOUND ] on their face and they come out and they're like, that was the best thing ever.

That's what it's all about.

♪ WESTERN MUSIC (Cynthia) It's the darndest place you'll ever see.

It's on all our shirts and all the different things we have because you've never seen anything like this place.

That's probably the one word I would say, "it's the darndest place you'll ever see."

♪ WESTERN MUSIC My name's Danna Cogburn Barrett.

I'm with Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch.

This is a family owned and operated working ranch.

There's actually three generations here.

It's my mom and dad.

That would be Rooster and Lucille, myself and my husband Craig.

And then we have two boys, Tyler and Tanner, and they're the next generation.

So we all live right here on the ranch and work it every day.

We have got 15 different types of animals.

You know, we got the fallow deer from England.

Ostriches are from South Africa.

We got boar goats, they're also from South Africa.

Chickens, we've got bunnies.

We got Nigerian dwarf goats.

We have our St.

Croix sheep.

But then we have our rainbow lorikeets, which is everybody's favorite thing.

And they're from Australia.

One of our latest exhibits was the stingrays and then our big giant tortoises.

Their first reaction is like, wow, oh my gosh.

You know, and it's, you know, when they get on the truck especially, they're like, I can't believe I've not been here or done this, I can't believe this is here.

So when their first time coming, it's kind of an amazement.

You know, it's kind of a cool thing.

(Danna) We actually started out in the ostrich business back in Oklahoma, back in 1993, as we were getting bigger in the business, we decided we either had to get out of Oklahoma or we had to get out of ostriches.

So we loaded up and came to sunny Arizona because this is very much the natural climate for the ostriches.

They like the hot, dry, arid climate.

And Arizona's perfect.

And that is exactly why we're at this beautiful location right here below Picacho Peak in the background.

(Cynthia) Her dad and herself put something together that nobody would say, "hey, I'm just gonna do ostriches in the desert."

They researched this for many years from Oklahoma and all the things I've learned about it.

I was like, nobody would even think about doing something like that in Arizona, it's so hot.

Every time someone comes it's a new adventure, every time I come to the trucks, it's not the same.

Everybody says, "oh, well, you've been, you've been."

No, it's always different.

You got that wrong.

It tastes like beef.

(Danna) That back in Oklahoma, we got into ostrich farming because there's three main products, the meat, the hide and the feathers.

There is so much potential for ostrich antibodies.

There's so many things that they can do with it.

There's been stuff for COVID, stuff for flu.

We've talked to the Mayo Clinic, the U of A, the Flinn Foundation.

They got a new research facility in Phoenix that they're trying to build up.

And hopefully there can be some opportunities there, but there's tremendous opportunity with ostrich antibodies.

So I have people who can never say, I've passed this place a hundred times.

And I'm gonna say, "you know what?

I'm not even gonna come kick you because after you do it, you're gonna kick yourself.

It took you so long to stop."

And without a doubt, every time they come out, they're like, you are so right.

I will not drive by ever again.

Now we know we have a smart and curious audience and we'd like to know what oddities you'd like to see on our show.

You probably know of some that we've never even heard of.

So feel free to send us a message on Facebook, Instagram, or X. Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again soon.