Promoting Resident Ownership of Manufactured Home Parks

The Leviticus 25:23 Alternative Fund is part of a growing effort nationwide to help preserve and enhance manufactured home parks as a source of very affordable housing. This effort provides park residents with both the training and flexible capital to make it possible for them to form a cooperative and collectively purchase their park land.

In our area, park residents typically own their homes, but rent the land beneath. If a park is sold, or redeveloped for a different land use, residents can lose not only their homes, but also the equity they invested in their homes. Our manufactured home park program works to provide another option – a resident purchase opportunity – that has benefits not only for the park residents, but also for park owners.

For park residents, resident ownership offers: Greater control of rents Democratic management of the park Long term security because the park cannot be sold or closed Stronger sense of community
	For park owners, resident ownership offers: A viable option for selling their parks at a competitive price Timely real estate transactions, from purchase offer to closing A vested interest in the continuation of the park by the residents

Leviticus’ work with manufactured home parks is concentrated in New York and New Jersey. It blends our expertise in financing for affordable housing with the outreach, training and technical skills of two other nonprofit organizations that are our technical assistance partners.

In New Jersey, this statewide initiative is called Cooperative Owned and Operated Parks-New Jersey or CO-OP NJ for short. Real Estate Advisory & Development Services, Inc. (READS) and Leviticus are working together to promote CO-OP NJ in New Jersey, which has over 270 manufactured home parks. It is estimated that almost 60,000 residents live in these parks and more than 60 percent of them are age 55 or older, many of them living on fixed incomes.

In New York, the Manufactured Home Park Resident-Ownership program is a collaborative effort between Rural Opportunities, Inc. and the Leviticus Fund. New York has 2,100 parks, with an estimated 75,000 families. In fact, the state already has 14 resident-owned manufactured home park cooperatives with the first one dating back as early as 1990.

Creating Resident Owned Communities

To create a resident owned community in a manufactured home park requires two essential pieces:

• resident training and hands-on assistance to move through the steps of forming a cooperative and successfully purchasing and operating the park
• access to flexible capital to cover the park’s purchase, as well as needed infrastructure improvements to water, septic and road systems

Leviticus, along with our TA partners – READS in NJ and ROI in upstate NY – recognize the opportunities that resident ownership offers manufactured home communities. Working together, we can provide residents with the training and capital to take that opportunity and make it a reality for the long-term stability of their park community.

If you are a park owner interested in selling your park, or a park resident whose community is interested in buying your park and forming a resident cooperative, please give us a call.

For more information:

• Leviticus – Contact David Raynor at 914.606.9003 ext 203 or draynor@leviticusfund.org
• For New Jersey - Real Estate Advisory & Development Services (READS) – Contact Brian Keenan at 732.635.1000 or bkeenan@readsnj.com

• For New York - Rural Opportunities, Inc. (ROI) – Contact John Wiltse at 585.340.3346  or  jwiltse@ruralinc.org

Leviticus 25:23 Alternative Fund, Inc. is a member of the I'M HOME (Innovations in Manufactured Homes) network and a recipient of a $100,000 implementation grant to create a predevelopment loan pool for co-op conversion of eligible manufactured home parks in New York and New Jersey.