ST. GEORGE — Mobile home parks are having a moment in the Vermont Legislature this year.
Advocates for affordable housing have pushed successfully to have mobile homes, which make up 7% of Vermont’s housing units, included in discussions about a new housing bond or other fixes to the housing shortage.
The $37 million housing bond approved in 2017 is expected to lead to the construction of 800 new units of housing. Some advocates say that isn’t enough.
“As the Senate committee in particular thinks about whether or not they want to propose a second bond, the housing community is saying, ‘There are other housing needs that need to be addressed as well,’” said Jennifer Hollar, the director of policy and special projects for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.
Housing is a major priority for low-income advocates and for economic development groups that see the high cost of housing in Vermont as an impediment to attracting workers to the state. In a Jan. 15 report ordered by the Senate Economic Development, Housing and Community Affairs Committee, the state treasurer’s office described housing as a “critical issue” for the state.
Treasurer Beth Pearce stopped short of saying in the report that she would support another housing bond, but she included mobile home parks in her findings. A large bill containing miscellaneous measures to increase access to housing in Vermont, S.237, also includes financial assistance for mobile homes in parks. And H.372, an act relating to cooperative mobile homes and modular homes, is in the House General Affairs Committee, although no action has been taken on it.
“Preserving and enhancing mobile homes and mobile home parks will definitely be part of our omnibus housing bill this year,” said Sen. Michael Sirotkin, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs.
“Just as we are doing with stick housing, we need to facilitate financing, siting, down payments, and infrastructure improvements,” said Sirotkin, D-Chittenden. “Helping residents transition into co-op or nonprofit park ownership can also be critical.”
Housing with a history
Mobile homes, and mobile home parks, have long been an affordable way for low-income people to lease or own their own property. According to the state Department of Housing and Community Development’s 2019 mobile home parks report, about a third of the state’s mobile homes are in parks.
In most areas of the state, mobile homes are still an affordable option, with an average price of $58,000 for a new single-wide home and $87,900 for a new double-wide, according to the report. The average monthly lot rent in the state last year was $347, a 7% increase since 2016.
According to the state report, 405 used mobile homes were sold without land in 2018, with an average price of $32,433.
While mobile home parks are a solution to some of the state’s pressing housing problems, it’s very difficult to create new mobile home parks, said Maura Collins, executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, which finances and promotes affordable housing for low- and moderate-income Vermonters.
“Siting a new mobile home park is next to impossible at this point,” said Collins. “The communities have changed their zoning to not allow mobile home parks the way they used to; most of the ones we have are grandfathered in. It’s a really dense way of living, and I’m guessing that what the communities wouldn’t say is that there is a value judgment on mobile homes.”
Inflation in Chittenden County parks
In Vermont’s most densely populated region, a shortage of housing for low- and middle-income Vermonters is starting to push even mobile home parks out of reach.
There are about 240 mobile home parks registered in Vermont, according to statistics kept by the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development. About 10% of those parks are in Chittenden County, home to Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, and the region of Vermont where home prices have risen the fastest in recent years.
With 1,794 lots available, Chittenden County also has the lowest vacancy rate of any Vermont county within its parks, said Melissa MacDonald, a mortgage operations manager at Vermont State Employees Credit Union. Any affordable typical home that goes on the market immediately draws dozens of offers. A standard ranch house, for example, will cost in the high $200,000 to low $300,000 range, said MacDonald.
“We’re finding that the mortgage payment, and then taxes and homeowners’ insurance (for a mobile home), is becoming pretty close to what you pay for a standard home,” said MacDonald.
“I think people in Chittenden County know when they are going to look for starter homes or affordable housing, it’s just not there, or it’s not available outside of mobile homes and parks,” she said. “And we feel the parks are becoming more and more expensive each year as costs increase.”
Help from nonprofits
Sandy Jarvis had been living in the St. George mobile home park for five years when residents learned in 2018 that the owner was selling the park, and there was an opportunity for them to purchase it as part of a cooperative.
Jarvis joined the board of the new St. George Community Cooperative, which was set up with help from the Cooperative Development Institute or CDI, a Northampton, Massachusetts, nonprofit that helps small businesses and other entities form cooperatives.
Now Jarvis and eight other board members put away money from rents each month for future infrastructure upgrades and capital improvements, and have started applying for grants to help them with evaluation and future projects on the property about 12 miles southeast of Burlington. The park is home to 120 households.
“I like to have some control over my own destiny,” said Jarvis. “I plan on living there after retirement, and I wanted to know what was going on.”
About 20% of Vermont’s mobile home park lots are in cooperative parks, according to the Housing and Community Development report. Another 25% are in nonprofit parks.
But the cooperative model doesn’t solve all of the affordability problems at the parks. At the Tri-Park Cooperative Housing Corp. in Brattleboro, the largest mobile home cooperative in Vermont with 304 units, aging infrastructure and lingering damage from 2011 Tropical Storm Irene mean the cooperative doesn’t have the money to invest in needed infrastructure improvements and maintain its health and safety requirements, according to the co-op president, Kay Curtis.
Tri-Park is calling for legislative action to steer more money toward capital improvements. The co-op board estimated it will cost the park about $4 million to relocate families that could be put in danger by the next flood, and fix two sewer systems and a bridge.
“Because we’re 30 years old, the infrastructure is getting old,” said Curtis. We have two bridges. One we can keep for another 12 years, and the other needs to be replaced immediately.”
Some Tri-Park residents are still living in older mobile homes that are dangerously close to Whetstone Brook, said Hollar, who described conditions there as “urgent.” After Tropical Storm Irene, Hollar said, the co-op that owns Tri-Park wasn’t able to get a plan in place to use some of the federal money that Vermont received for disaster recovery.
“It is such a shame to me that when we had those resources, we couldn’t address that situation and get people out of harm’s way,” Hollar said. “Statewide, that is the last big Irene recovery project that is undone.”
Tri-Park has since invited community members with financial expertise to joint its board, and is expected to have a master plan completed in the next month, Hollar said.
An affordable option in a rural state
Meanwhile, mobile home parks are still the best, most affordable option for a Vermonter to own property and be part of a community, said Erhard Mahnke, coordinator for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. Therefore, he said, it makes sense for the state to help with the infrastructure needs at parks statewide. Mahnke estimated that those problems would cost about $30 million over the next three to five years to fix. After using all the available state and federal loans and grants, there’s still a gap of about $9 million, he said.
“This in part is driving the need and the desire by Senate Economic Development to do a second housing revenue bond,” said Mahnke. Barring the approval of another bond, “some new infusion of funds into Vermont Housing and Conservation Board would be needed to address these needs,” Mahnke said — a move that was recommended by the state treasurer in her Jan. 15 report.
Studies show if a park is owned by a nonprofit or a cooperative, the rate of rent increases is lower than if the park is privately owned, said Hollar.
“A lot of folks want space between them and their neighbors, and their own four walls,” she said. “Particularly in a rural state like ours, it’s an important option for people.”
A VHCB report on mobile home parks released last year contained many financial recommendations, including one that VHCB make grant funding and loans available to help parks with their infrastructure projects. It also called on the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, the owners of affordable mobile home parks, and other stakeholders to do a better job of marketing the parks to young people.
The marketing efforts should “reframe the image of mobile homes as an affordable option in a more innovative and positive light, especially for younger buyers,” the report said.
Curtis, who is 66 and a retired child care provider, has testified in the Statehouse about the value of mobile home parks to her and others.
“What a great opportunity for us it is after a whole lifetime of service and minimum wage jobs, to have an option that’s affordable,” she said. “My neighbors are nurses and people who swept hospital floors.”
She added that she loves where she lives.
“It’s a mountain with a bunch of nice little boxes on it, and we can live side by side and maybe we’re scrunched in a little, but now I have an affordable home,” she said. “I can spray paint the outside a nice color, and see the birds and butterflies, and it’s all great.”
Curtis enjoys serving on the co-op board, too.
“I can put my service in here and be helpful to other people who don’t have so many options for their housing,” she said.
