Category Archives: housing cooperatives

Two Chittenden County VT Mobile Home Parks Working to Preserve Affordable Housing through Cooperative Park Purchase

affordable housing, Chittenden County VT, housing cooperatives, Inclusive Communities, Mobile Home Coops
mobile home park picture
Photo credit to Vermont Public Radio

NEWS RELEASE 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jonathan Bond, 802-660-3455×105,  jbond@cvoeo.org

“With the motivated resident leaders that these two parks have, we have seen success in the cooperative model throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and elsewhere. Cooperative ownership can lead to improved quality of life and maintain the long-term affordability for the park’s residents. It creates thriving communities where residents can continue to own their home, collectively own the surrounding land and prosper.” 

St. George & Hinesburg, VT – A coalition of two mobile home park cooperatives of St. George Villa MHP and Sunset Lake Villa MHP are working feverishly to purchase their respective parks from private ownership and have put forth their best offer to purchase the parks. At a public meeting Wednesday, December 13, 2017, residents heard from their cooperative board’s terms of making an offer, including the engineer’s inspection report and property appraisal completed with financial support from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.  The best initial offer the cooperative can make will be limited to the appraised value they’ve received of $6,025,000.00; this is well short of the current asking price registered with the State of Vermont for the two parks of $6,950,000.00.

With the motivated resident leaders that these two parks have, we have seen success in the cooperative model throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and elsewhere. Cooperative ownership can lead to improved quality of life and maintain the long-term affordability for the park’s residents. It creates thriving communities where residents can continue to own their home, collectively own the surrounding land and prosper.

Residents, knowing it’s a long shot for the owner to accept their offer are still proceeding for their once in a generation opportunity to bring their park out of private investors hands and under the control of the residents who live there. Residents thus far have been successful in exercising their petitioned rights under Vermont law, allowing them up to 165 days to make an offer. They know it is an uphill battle with potential outside bidders willing to offer significantly more.

CVOEO’s Mobile Home Program providing residents support about their rights under state law and the Cooperative Development Institute providing technical purchase, and cooperative management assistance will continue to stand with residents through this process. A process we have seen the first-hand transform the lives of the residents living cooperatively owned communities

The coming days and weeks will tell if the resident’s offer will be accepted. In making the offer, the resident cooperative is willing to raise their current lot-rents now so they can see their money reinvested into the resident-owned land to keep long-term affordability. The long-term affordability is particularly important given that Vermont and specifically Chittenden County struggles to provide adequate, affordable housing supply to its residents. Under new private ownership, it’s most likely they will also see lot-rents increased for investor gain. We are hoping the informed and responsible offer made by residents will prevail.

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Housing as a Vaccine

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The 2016 Homelessness Awareness Day and Vigil was held at the Vermont State House in Montpelier on January 7th. Two House committees Housing, General and Military Affairs and Human Services had a joint hearing on homelessness, taking testimony on housing and homelessness issues. A number of other hearings regarding homelessness happened in the building during the course of the day.

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Opening the hearing was nationally recognized pediatrician Dr. Megan Sandel (principal investigator on Children’s Health Watch,  Associate professor at Boston University’s School of Medicine,  and Medical director, at  the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership at Boston Medical Center), who has done path-breaking work on the effects of housing insecurity and homelessness on children. She gave a brilliant presentation on “Housing as a Vaccine: A Prescription for Child Health.”

At that hearing, Representatives and attending members of the public also heard from Vermont homeless service providers Linda Ryan (Director of Samaritan House) and Sara Kobylenski (Executive Director of Upper Valley Haven) on the latest trends and some recommended solutions to end or decrease homelessness in Vermont.

At Noon, community members, legislative leaders, administration officials, and advocates took the State House steps for a vigil to remember our friends and neighbors who died without homes, and to bring awareness of the struggles of those still searching for safe and secure housing. U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy and other legislative representatives and advocates joined and spoke at the vigil.

How can Housing be a Vaccine?

Dr. Megan presented data to support her thesis that housing can be protective for health. The quality, stability and affordability are important determinants to heath of all people. That means improving housing can provide multiple benefits. According to Dr. Megan, timing and duration of housing insecurity matter greatly to a child’s health. By increasing availability, affordability, and quality of housing, the health effect of housing insecurity can be decreased. Dr. Megan also provided specific evidence regarding housing quality and children’s health. For example, developmental issues, worsening asthma and other conditions have been tied to specific housing conditions such as pests, mold, tobacco smoke, lead exposure and so forth, and tied to long term effect with poor health outcomes.

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According to Children’s Health Watch, “unstable housing, hunger and health are linked” because evidence shows that being behind on rent is strongly associated with negative health outcomes such as high risk of child food insecurity, children and mothers who are more likely in fair or poor health, children who are more likely at risk for development delay, mothers who are more likely experiencing depressive symptoms. Research conducted by the National Housing Conference from Children’s Healthwatch illustrates that there is no safe level of homelessness. The timing (pre-natal, post-natal) and duration of homelessness (more or less than six month) compound the risk of harmful childhood health outcomes. The younger and longer a child experiences homelessness, the greater the cumulative toll of negative health outcomes, which can have lifelong effects on the child, the family, and the community.

Several community representatives spoke in support of increasing housing affordability by targeting more public funding to support housing affordability and housing stability and adding to state housing directed funds with a $2 per night fee on hotel, motel and inn stays.

 

The co-op alternative

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 Before Burlingtonians succumb to the blandishments of “purpose-built” student-housing developers, they might do well to consider an alternative with a long tradition of affordability: student co-op housing.

Student housing co-ops are scattered around the country. Perhaps the best known is the Berkeley Student Cooperative, which dates from 1933 and offers housing to about 1,300 students in 20 properties.  Berkeleystudentcoop1According to the co-op’s website, monthly rent is about $745 in a room and board house (compared to $1,354 in a university dorm triple) and $433 to $881 a month for single room in an apartment. (By comparison, the market rate for a one-bedroom apartment is typically over $2,000.) No wonder there are 1,000 students on the waiting list.

And yes, some of those Berkeley co-op houses have game rooms and hot tubs.

A thumbnail case for student co-ops can be found here, on the website of the North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO). Housing co-ops operate on variations of a shared-equity model. Here’s NASCO’s description of a common form:

“In a ‘Market Equity’ coop, a member joins the coop, buys a share, and lives in a unit.  This is similar to something like a condo complex, but instead of owning one condo, you own a share in the whole complex.  When you decide to leave the coop, you can sell your share at whatever the market will pay for it.”

Housing co-ops also come with shared governance, work expectations, and so on. They’re not limited to students, of course. Champlain Housing Trust has five co-ops with 81 apartment units in Burlington, with another one on the way on Bright Street.

You’ll never be faced with this choice, but it never hurts to ask: Which would you rather see on the northeast corner of North Winooski Avenue and Main Street: purpose-built student housing, with a climbing wall, or a student housing co-op without one?