Chic Peek: A look inside Sartell's Evergreen Village changes notions of manufactured homes.

The negative reputation of the trashy trailer park— quite possibly the last place many people could envision themselves living— may be obscuring one of the largest potential solutions to the affordable housing shortage in Minnesota.

With 950 Minnesota parks housing 50,000 families, manufactured home communities are among the untapped sources of affordable housing in the state, said Warren Kramer, executive director of the Northcountry Cooperative Foundation.

Today’s newly manufactured homes are solid, spacious, and relatively inexpensive due to their efficient construction in controlled manufacturing facilities. They are far superior to the older, wheeled trailers and are equal to most traditional homes in quality, Kramer said.

“If I blindfolded you and showed you the interior of one of these homes,” said Warren Hanson, president and CEO of the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund (GMHF), “you’d be hard-pressed to tell that it was manufactured.”

Newer manufactured homes cost an average of $40,000 to $50,000, which translates to mortgages as low as $400 a month. Add lot rents around $250 per month and the affordability factor is clear, Hanson added. GMHF is working with the Northcountry Cooperative Foundation, Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, and The McKnight Foundation on a pilot project to demonstrate that manufactured homes in resident-owned communities are a viable alternative to traditional ownership.

But the public stigma haunts many parks, due to aging housing stock and declining infrastructure, he said. As several parks have been sold off, closed and redeveloped during the last decade due to rising property values, residents know that their future is not entirely in their hands.

---

“Resident ownership changes that equation. When they own the land as well as the home, they get to make the decisions about policy, about how the park is run, about fees and about who gets to live there."
- Warren Kramer, Northcountry Cooperative Foundation

---

In 2007, Connie Mere and two dozen other residents bought the Chic Peek: A look inside Sartell’s Evergreen Village changes notions of manufactured homes. Are Manufactured Communities an Overlooked Housing Solution? Greenwood Mobile Home Park in Moorhead and renamed it Bennett Park Cooperative.

Now, she’s moving into one of the 20 new manufactured homes cooperative members purchased last year from the FEMA to update the community’s stock of affordable housing.

“We’ve got homes on our property that are abandoned and we’re trying to move them out,” said Mere, the cooperative board secretary and a longtime resident. "We’re trying to bring in more people, more families.”

Bennett Park isn’t the first manufactured home community to become a resident-owned cooperative, but it may be a sign of things to come. The Minnesota Housing Finance Agency has committed $12 million to help the residents of four to eight communities purchase and convert their parks into cooperatives.

In central Minnesota, the Initiative Foundation has invested several grants to organize cooperatives and educate others about the benefits of manufactured home communities.

“When you have a stake in the future of your community, when you’re the land owner and also the landlord, these parks can become affordable places to live and raise a family,” said Don Hickman, a foundation senior program manager.

---

“Cooperatives ensure the profit is being recycled back into the park for improvements.”
- Don Hickman, Initiative Foundation

---

The idea is not a bad one, but there’s a reason only four parks out of 950 are resident-owned, said Mike Ivers, a Grand Rapids resident who manages seven park communities in which he is also a partial owner.

“If you have a board that’s capable of managing the community, I have no problems with it,” he said. “But it takes a lot of work and a lot of money.”

That’s why Northcountry Cooperative Foundation’s provides support to local boards. The foundation helps to line up property management services, secure competitive financing, and ensure that reserves are funded.

Bennett Park members know how difficult it is to make cooperative management work and how much dedication park management requires, Mere added, but in the end, it’s worth it.

“We make the decisions,” she said. IQ