In many respects, Triangle Court is like most other mobile home parks in Vermont — with one crucial difference. In April residents of the park decided to buy the property and turn it into a cooperative.
It wasn’t the first time Triangle Court had been put on the market. Residents had expressed an interest in purchasing the park over the years, but had never been able to come up with the resources to do so. And the would-be seller, Beverly Lent, who bought the land with her husband more than 30 years ago, was unable to find an outside buyer.
So she stayed on, and each year raised the lot rent 4 percent. Under state law a mobile home park owner can increase the rent by that amount without providing justification.
Jerry Calsetta, a plumber who purchased a home in Triangle Court 18 years ago, said that when he moved in lot rents were $200. The year before it became community-owned, rents were nearly twice that.
“By owning, we determine what we want to charge for rent,” Calsetta said.
In the first year of community ownership lot rents went down about $13. But the co-op model is about more than saving money, Calsetta said. It gives residents the power to manage their own affairs and make improvements to the development. Perhaps most important, it guarantees that the property won’t be sold and liquidated without full membership approval.
Though a new owner would be required by state law to give 18 months’ notice before closing the park, residents would have no way of fighting or reversing that decision.
“They don’t see that risk generally until it’s too late,” said Paul Bradley, founding president of Resident Owned Communities, USA. “Those are the worst phone calls of all.”
‘A big leap of faith’
Vermont has some protections in place for residents of mobile home parks. Private owners wanting to sell a park have to notify the state, which gives residents 45 days to decide if they want to pursue cooperative ownership. Residents then have an opportunity to assess whether there’s enough interest among members and financial support to buy the property.
“If they’re not invested as a group, it’s not going to work,” said Annik Paul, of the Cooperative Development Institute, a group that assists residents interested in cooperative ownership.
Jonathan Bond, director of the mobile home program at the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, said resident ownership is not always met with enthusiasm. “It’s a big leap of faith residents take,” Bond said. “In some instances there may not be anyone living in the park who is comfortable stepping up in that way.”
However, if a majority of the members of a community agree to move forward, they are given 120 days to evaluate the condition of the property and make a final decision.
In this case the Cooperative Development Institute secured $10,000 in grant money to conduct an engineering assessment of the water, sewer and electrical systems. Meanwhile, residents of the park had a series of meetings to make sure everyone was on board.
Calsetta said there were a lot of questions and people were initially skeptical, but in the end all the tenant homeowners agreed to participate. (A mental health agency that occupied a lot declined to participate and has vacated the property. Lent, the seller, has since died.)
The membership fee is $100 and refundable if a homeowner decides to sell. Any new residents are required to become members.
According to the CDI’s Paul, there was another buyer in the wings so they had to move quickly. The engineering study showed no major investments in the property were needed, and the CDI was able to secure the loan to buy the property.
Calsetta, who as board president acknowledged there is a lot of work involved in managing the co-op, said residents have already begun to see the benefits. They plan to improve the gravel road, which hasn’t been upgraded in years. Lot rents may continue to decline. And residents now own the land they live on.
“We want everybody to feel like this is their home,” Calsetta said. “That they can take pride in ownership.”
Growing in popularity
Vermont has 11 resident-owned mobile home parks, and nationwide the movement has seen rapid growth. According to ROC USA’s Bradley, there are about 1,000 mobile home park co-ops around the country. ROC USA itself has worked with 195 communities in 14 states.
The idea originated in New Hampshire in the mid-1980s when investors were buying up mobile home parks and turning them into condominium developments, apartment blocks or other ventures. One such park in Meredith, New Hampshire, bucked the trend after residents secured a $38,000 loan from the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund that allowed them to buy the property.
“Most of us just figured we’d be thrown out, so we were looking for solutions — moving, buying something else, renting somewhere, just hanging in and hoping for the best,” one of the residents told a local newspaper reporter.
In June 1984, the 13-unit Meredith Center Co-op became New Hampshire’s first cooperatively owned mobile home park. Until then community loan funds had primarily been used to assist child care centers or food co-ops. And according to Bradley, administrators of the New Hampshire fund figured they would go back to doing just that.
But after an article on Meredith Center appeared in the New Hampshire Times, the phones started to ring off the hook. Residents from other communities were calling to find out how they too could avoid being evicted from their mobile home parks.
“It was such a quiet problem up until that point,” Bradley said.
One of the reasons for encouraging resident-owned communities or nonprofit ownership is that mobile home parks remain one of the most affordable options for low- to middle-income homeowners. In Vermont there are 241 mobile home parks, according to Arthur Hamlin, housing program coordinator in the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development. Eleven of those are resident-owned, and 47 are owned by nonprofit housing agencies. In total they account for about 7,100 mobile home lots.
“Mobile home parks are critical to providing affordable housing,” said Bond, at the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. “They fill a gap in a rural state that other types of housing may not be able to provide.”
If mobile home parks are turned over to private investors there’s little that can be done to stop those new owners from raising rents or selling the property to another developer.
“You never know what a new private investor is going to say they want for lot rent,” said Paul. “If it’s currently $320 a month and someone wants to raise it to $520 there’s nothing really stopping them.”
According to Calsetta there’s always interest when a lot space opens up at Triangle Court. And that’s not surprising. Bond said recent data show that the vacancy rate among the state’s 11 cooperatively owned mobile home parks is just 1 percent.
“If we had to advertise we would, but we don’t have to,” Calsetta said. “People stop by all the time. There’s a market for it.”
