Residents of the 90-home property now own the 22-acre site and control the fate of the troubled community. “Everything is going to change,” Don Feist, president of the Trailer Terrace Community Cooperative, said.
Don Feist holds up water sample from previous community water system.
The Great Falls Tribune tells MHProNews that the rusted tanks that once stored the community’s water had previously held oil at a refinery. Some of the sewer service pipes, installed in the 1960s, were made of paper. Unsafe levels of arsenic in the water were detected in 2012. However, the owner refused to do anything to improve the water and sewer systems, and eventually the property went into receivership and things were at a standstill.
In desperation, the 250 residents of the community, one of 34 communities or parks in Cascade County, turned to NeighborWorks Montana for help. This is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping low-income people obtain affordable housing.
NeighborWorks put Trailer Terrace residents in touch with ROC USA, which stands for “Resident Owned Communities.” This organization offers financing for cooperatives that form in mobile or manufactured home communities, and Trailer Terrace took out a $1.4 million loan from ROC to purchase their community.
“Sheila Rice and her crew at NeighborWorks did a lot of things for us, and they still will be doing things for us,” Don Feist said of Rice, NeighborWorks’ executive director.
Rice said that her organization only helped the determined residents of this community. “These are all hard-working people who have regular full-time jobs, and they’ve done a lot of work to try to get this sale completed,” Rice said. “Some of them have lived there 20 and 30 years, and they remember the old days when Trailer Terrace was very nicely kept up, and that’s what they want to restore the park to.”
Ownership via a cooperative, she says, offers security to residents in controlling rents, amenities and water and sewer updates. Members receive long-term transferrable leases of up to 75 years, which makes the home more valuable when homes are sold and a board runs the cooperative, Rice explained. Money that typically would go to the owner can be invested in improvement and infrastructure for the community.
Trailer Terrace is the latest community in Montana to form a cooperative in order to improve living conditions. Others have been created in Red Lodge, Kalispell, and at Missouri Meadows, another manufactured home community in Great Falls.
In addition to purchasing their community, residents of Trailer Terrace have also formed a water and sewer district, which enabled them to apply for and receive $2.8 million from state and federal agencies to construct new water and sewer treatment systems.
Lyle Meeks of NCI Engineering, which worked with residents on securing the funding, said the grant amount was unusually high. He said that was because of the severe environmental and public health concerns, which caused the applications to score high in the funding approval process. “I’ve never seen a situation this acute,” Meeks said of the failing water and sewer systems.
He said the state funding agencies, the Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and the state Department of Commerce, all deserved credit. “They’ve been extremely helpful,” Meeks said. “And those staff people don’t get much kudos. Usually they just get yelled at.”
A new water well has been drilled and a 40,000-gallon water tank has been installed a quarter of a mile from the community. Meeks explained that the quality of the water is better in that location, and water pressure also will be better because of the new location.
In addition to securing safe and reliable water and sewer systems, there are other benefits to community ownership as well. “Because of the heavy grant assistance, the rent will remain an affordable $300 a month, which will include the water and sewer bill,” Feist explained. “The reason we wanted to buy it is because everything was broken and the only way we were going to get it fixed was if we fixed it ourselves.”
Lining up the financing to purchase the park and arrange the infrastructure financing took 4-1/2 years, and Feist said obtaining the purchase money and the grants were a community effort.
“It would not have happened without the help of many people,” he said. He thanks state legislators Sen. Mitch Tropila, (D-Great Falls), and Sen. Brian Hoven, (R-Great Falls), who pushed for the funding in Helena. He said that residents are also grateful for help extended by Cascade County commissioners, who applied for a federal community block grant. In addition, former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus and Sen. Jon Tester lined up a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, Environmental Engineer Meeks did his work pro bono before the residents had any funding, and Attorney Dan Shannon also was instrumental in getting the project completed, Feist explained.
“This was really a community project. Everybody helped,” he concluded. ##
(Photo Credit: Great Falls Tribune)
Article Submitted by Sandra Lane to – Daily Business News- MHProNews.
