Resident-owned manufactured home communities

Many rural and farmworker households own their mobile homes but rent the land beneath them, so a park sale, rent hike or closure can push them out. The model is not farm-specific; it reaches farmers and farmworkers where they live in rural manufactured home parks.

Works in the US, where parks are a major source of unsubsidised affordable rural housing. It depends on technical assistance (the ROC USA Network), specialist lenders such as ROC USA Capital, and where possible state grants and resident notice or first-refusal laws; farmworker cases have combined state farmworker housing grants with park preservation funds.

When the people who depend on a piece of land jointly own it, decisions and income stay with them, so rents rise only to cover real costs. Patient capital and expert support let low-income residents act fast enough to compete in a sale.

ROC USA and ROC USA Capital; New Hampshire Community Loan Fund; CASA of Oregon's Manufactured Housing Cooperative Development Center; ROC Northwest at the Northwest Cooperative Development Center; California Center for Cooperative Development; Rural LISC.

Residents often lose to faster investors where notice or first-refusal laws are weak. Loan payments and old wells and sewers can force lot fee increases. Co-ops need ongoing governance and bookkeeping training, and organising must bridge language and other barriers in farmworker communities.

Began in 1984 when residents saved a 14-home park in Meredith, New Hampshire, with the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund; ROC USA was spun off in 2008 to take the model national. It draws on the wider cooperative movement and is openly taught through ROC USA Network affiliates.