Deer Ridge Mobile Home Park co-op board secretary Beverly Chase, left, speaks during an interview on Thursday in Augusta. Other board members are vice president Donna Dennis, second from left, treasurer Gertrude Turcotte and president Mike Morissette.
Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel tells MHProNews that earlier this month the residents joined together to form a cooperative, with the help of multiple nonprofit organizations, and purchased the park together. They became the fourth such resident-owned manufactured home community in Maine, taking control of, and responsibility for, the community they call home.
“We’re all low-income, and we know what it’s like to live in apartments. When you own your own home, you’re going to work harder on it,” said Donna Dennis, 56, a two-year resident of the park and vice president of the new co-op’s five-member board of directors, all residents. “You should be able to be proud of where you live. I’m extremely proud we own it.”
The new co-op of residents, who already owned their own manufactured homes in the park, and were renting only their lots, closed on the property with assistance from Cooperative Development Institute, a technical assistance provider with the Resident Owned Community USA Network. This group is a national non-profit organization that works to help residents of manufactured home communities form cooperatives and buy their communities. Some funding came from Genesis Community Loan Fund, a nonprofit that provides low-interest loans to help provide affordable housing.
Jessica Pooley, a cooperative development specialist with the Cooperative Development Institute, said the organization had learned of the park and thought it might be a candidate to become resident-owned. So she went to see it for herself.
“I drove through the park to look at it and when I left, I cried,” Pooley said, explaining that she doesn’t often do that. She said she wondered, “How am I going to sell this, to get others to help, knowing it is so run-down?” She said she knew it was going to be a money pit.
One positive note about the property, however, was the fact that it had a large parcel of undeveloped land attached to it. Pooley felt the land could be used to expand the community and provide additional affordable housing in Augusta. As it is now, the existing manufactured homes are squeezed onto just two acres of a roughly 60-acre, largely undeveloped tract.
Pooley started knocking on doors, and found residents, if initially skeptical, who were willing to talk about the idea. One of the first she met was Beverly Chase, 64, a 20-year resident of the community who is now secretary of the board. Chase’s unit is home to her and nine others, mostly family members,
“I was skeptical at first. We couldn’t believe somebody would want to help poor people like that,” Chase said of her initial reaction to meeting Pooley, without whom, she said, they never would have been able to take ownership of the community.
Former Non-profit owners were not able to do much for the community.
The community was previously owned and operated by Homeworkers Organized for More Employment, or HOME, an Orland-based nonprofit group that creates employment for, and provides services to, low income individuals and families. The other co-owner was the St. Francis Community, which got involved in the early 1990s, according to Lawrence Reichard, assistant director of HOME Co-op. The organization stepped in after Maine State Housing Authority asked if it would be interested in running it after the city condemned it because the septic system was overflowing and the private owner at the time couldn’t afford to fix it, Reichard said.
HOME, too, tried to create a co-op of residents to own this community, and started forming one that never really became a functional co-op, according to Chase and Reichard. So, instead, HOME bought and ran the park. Chase said residents, at the time, couldn’t seem to pull the fledgling co-op together, and it fell apart.
This time, she and other residents are confident they can work together and make their group ownership a success. “I don’t believe it will fall apart,” Chase said. “We’ve got Jessica’s help, and we’ve got a good core group here. If we work together, I think it’s going to work. I’m going to give it my all.”
Residents said the community hasn’t been maintained in recent years, and HOME officials have been unresponsive when they’ve called them about problems or a lack of maintenance. Reichard said the organization is not a professional property management company, and was concerned if it raised the rent too high to pay for a higher level of upkeep, it could price residents out of the community.
“We did our best, with limited resources,” Reichard said, noting it was never the group’s intention to run the community, which he noted is a fair distance away from their Orland base. “We’re extremely pleased the residents have formed a co-op to buy the community. We’re very excited for them. This is what we wanted all along and we wish them all the best in the world.”
Residents make changes through democratic process.
Decisions about how to run the community, and how much rent to charge, are now being made democratically. The park is overseen by the board of directors, but major decisions, such as how much rent to charge for lots, are made by a vote of all resident-owners. Five members who were the only ones to express interest in it were appointed initially, but a formal election is set for Sunday.
Mike Morissette, 59, a 10-year resident of the community, and the first president of the co-op’s board of directors, said the first thing they needed to do, and need to continue to do, is to “make sure everyone gets along.”
The first vote of the membership, which Pooley said was a unanimous vote, was to raise the lot rent, from $140 to $180 a month, a rate which Morissette said is still well below other communities, and includes water and septic on the community’s private systems.
Residents said raising the rent was necessary because they’ve got plans for the place, including a new leach field, road improvements and a culvert to allow access across a stream to the large parcel of undeveloped land out back.
Gertrude Turcotte, 71, who has lived in Deer Ridge for 12 years, and is the group’s treasurer, said what is best for the community is what guides the group’s decisions on what improvements and actions should be made.
Residents who don’t pay their rent, or break other community rules, after a warning process, may be taken to court and evicted by the co-op. Dennis said the task of enforcing the rules is one of her roles in the group.
Present group hopes to attract more residents.
Now that they have ownership, they also have big plans. Their long term goal is to develop some of the land, either as lots to rent or have the co-op buy more homes and put them in place to rent. While more residents would bring in more income, group members said their first priority is to keep them affordable, so others can gain the benefits of owning their own homes they now have.
“This is a low-income community, and we want to keep it that way,” Dennis said. “We hope to expand so there is more affordable housing here. We’d like to make a play area for children, maybe a community garden, and make this a nice, safe, family community.”
Amanda Bartlett, executive director of the Augusta Housing Authority, a quasi-municipal group which seeks to help provide affordable housing, said an expanded, cooperatively owned community could help provide more affordable housing in Augusta.
“Hopefully this initiative will expand homeownership opportunities to lower income residents as many Augusta residents struggle to afford the median home price,” Bartlett said. “The co-op model is great in that when residents become owners, they are empowered to strengthen their community and define their own sense of place. The answer to our shortage of affordable housing doesn’t lie in one solution, but rather a patchwork of ideas and people coming together towards a common goal of giving people a safe and affordable place to call home.”
Resident-owners of the park each buy one share of the co-op, for $100, which, if they sell their unit, they can sell to the new owner. That share also gives them one vote when it comes time to make decisions about the park.
Pooley noted ownership also gives the residents some control over their own destiny, allows them to decide how much their rent will be, to get rid of service providers if the group doesn’t like their work, and prevent an outside owner from selling the park out from under them.
President Mike Morissette joked that because he and other residents will no longer be able to pick up the phone and call the owner of the community to complain about things, instead he’ll look in the mirror, and complain to himself. ##
(Photo Credit: Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel)
