Initiatives

New England Resident Owned Communities (NEROC)

As part of our long-term strategic vision for affordable housing development in the northeast, CDI is committed to assisting owners of manufactured homes in New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut) gain long-term control over their communities.

Through the NEROC Program, CDI helps owners of manufactured homes who live in rental communities to preserve and protect their homes by securing land tenure. Residents achieve ownership and control in the form of collectively organized nonprofit cooperatives that purchase and manage their manufactured home parks (MHPs).

Photo: The Ryder Woods community in Milford, CT was acquired by an association of the homeowners in April of 2009 with financing from ROC USA Capital. The Cooperative Development Institute provides technical assistance and training to the Association. Photo credit: ROC USA Staff.

We use a time-tested, innovative and successful model. The NEROC Program uses the highly successful model pioneered by the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund's Resident Owned Community (ROC-NH) program. In the state of New Hampshire, residents in 100 MHPs, with technical and financial support from the ROC-NH program, have seized the opportunity to organize, band together, and collectively purchase their parks to be run as a cooperative enterprise for the benefit of resident-owners.

These resident-owned communities have seen, as documented in a formal evaluation by the Carsey Institute at the University of NH, that ownership and control allows them to stabilize their lot rents, improve their park infrastructure, and obtain easier purchase financing—all of which leads to improved individual and community health and welfare, increased community safety, preservation of affordable housing, increased skills and capacity of individuals, and increased resale value of their homes.

A national network supports our work. The ROC-NH program has been taken to scale through the ROC USA™ Network, which supports local Certified Technical Assistance Providers (CTAPs), like CDI, to quickly and effectively respond to pending park sales. CDI joins a national network of ten other CTAPs providing this rapid response to for-sale MHPs, conducting outreach, raising awareness about the resident owned community model, and building a network of service providers for Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island.

Our program creates win-win-win solutions for residents, owners, and the broader community alike. In addition to targeting those MHPs that are listed for sale, we can assist MHP owners to sell their properties to their residents with ease--a purchase at full value with no broker or legal fees, quick turnaround (weeks instead of months), and pre-packaged programs allowing preferable tax treatment through structured sales.

• Are you the owner of a manufactured home in a park?
• Are you an owner of a manufactured home park?
• Are you interested in preserving affordable housing in your locality?

Contact Andy Danforth, Housing Program Manager, at adanforth@cdi.coop or 401-439-9795 with questions, comments, suggestions or requests.

Find out more about the ROC USA Network -- read the 2011 Community Reporter newsletter.

The Cooperative Development Institute is a member of the I'M HOME (Innovations in Manufactured Homes) network. I'M HOME is a multi-year initiative that seeks to ensure that families who choose to purchase manufactured homes can reap benefits from homeownership comparable to owners of other homes