New Hampshire Celebrates 150th MH Resident Owned Community, Leading the Nation in Affordable Homeownership
Source: Concord Monitor (excerpts) – New Hampshire is known for many firsts: the first to declare independence from England, and its first-in-the-nation primary.
New Hampshire is also the first state where residents of a manufactured home community purchased their park, forming a cooperative to retain control over by laws, like lot rent, to maintain affordability within their community.
Derry Oak Village, a 27-home park, celebrated a milestone this week as the 150th resident-owned community in the state.
Owning a manufactured home can be a path to affordable homeownership – and a way for many to downsize – but purchasing a home in a park means that the resident owns the structure, not the land it sits on.
The milestone cooperative builds on a rich New Hampshire history that has evolved since 1984 when residents in Meredith purchased their park, forming the first-ever resident owned community in the country.
Now, roughly 300 communities exist in 21 states – and vary in size from four homes to more than 400, according to ROC USA, the national arm that tracks these purchases. Homes in New Hampshire make up nearly half of this.
The trend of investors purchasing parks has also garnered the attention of federal legislators, with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched a program to help preserve manufactured housing, with $235 million in funding through the Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement program – providing grants to help repair and replace homes in parks.
Eligibility for the funding is restricted to resident-owned communities, tribal applicants, parks under non-profit or state ownership, and other qualifications that notably exclude private ownership.
The New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, in partnership with the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority, applies for a $75 million award.
Since 2016, out-of-state investors have purchased at least 10 New Hampshire parks, home to nearly 3,000 units, for a total of $245 million, according to the application submitted by the community loan fund.
Last year, U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen introduced legislation to make the funding a permanent fixture and has celebrated New Hampshire as a leader in the resident-owned model.
“We need to do all we can to preserve the affordable housing we have now, and resident-owned communities like Derry Oak Village Cooperative are helping to do just that,” she said in a statement. “New Hampshire has led the way in the resident-owned community movement for forty years and I hope residents of other states can benefit from its success.”
