For
Immediate Release
Feb.
20, 2013
West
Wood Village Resident Association Inc.
Homeowners
purchase 66-site Plymouth park; join growing
Mass.
trend of resident-owned manufactured home communities
Contacts:
Bob
Howard, President, West Wood Village Resident Association (774)
283-2878
Andy
Danforth, Housing Program Director, CDI (401) 439-9795
Michael
Sloss, Managing Director, ROC USA® Capital: (202) 595-2690
Paul
Bradley, President, ROC USA, LLC (603) 856-0709
Plymouth,
Mass. – Homeowners in this 66-home manufactured housing
community took a big step toward securing their financial futures
when they collectively bought their neighborhood as a resident
corporation today.
Bob
Howard, interim association president, said the board of directors is
focused on providing good services, including a staff person to
perform maintenance and upkeep around West Wood Village.
”I
think the overall feeling is one of happiness with becoming a
resident-owned community and being able to run our own lives,” said
Howard, a retired chemical engineer. “We now have control of our
destiny. Before we were all living on a month-to-month lease, and
there was always the possibility of being sold.
“It’s
getting rid of the unknown. We know now that we as the community are
running the community.”
The
resident association purchased the community Feb. 20 for $3.83
million with assistance from the Cooperative Development Institute.
CDI is a certified technical assistance provider with ROC USA®
Network, a national non-profit organization that works to help
residents of for-sale mobile home parks form cooperatives and buy
their communities. Technical assistance will continue to be provided
by CDI to the association for the length of the mortgage — a
minimum of 10 years.
“I’d
say the partnership with ROC USA has been excellent,” Howard said.
“They’re very supportive and CDI has been very supportive. I know
we couldn’t have done this without them.”
West
Wood Village is the fifth Massachusetts community in the ROC USA
Network. CDI and ROC USA helped more than 450 homeowners in two
Carver communities purchase their parks in June. In these democratic
associations, homeowners in the community each buy one low-cost
share. Each household has one vote on matters of the community. The
members elect a Board of Directors to act on day-to-day issues and
vote as a membership on larger matters like the annual budget,
by-laws and community rules.
Andy
Danforth, Director of CDI’s New England Resident Owned Communities
(NEROC) Program, said, “It’s very rewarding to work with
residents all over the state who are working hard to bring more
economic stability to their lives through this process of democratic
ownership.”
Financing
for the project came from ROC USA Capital and CDI. ROC USA Capital is
a wholly-owned subsidiary of ROC USA and a U.S. Department of
Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institution.
ROC
USA Capital Managing Director Michael Sloss pointed to the
community’s prime location near a large shopping center, historic
downtown Plymouth, and major roads to Boston, Cape Cod and
Providence, R.I.
“ROC
USA Capital was very pleased to partner with the homeowners at this
community and CDI to preserve 66 affordable homes in Plymouth,”
Sloss said. “To deliver long-term affordable fixed-rate permanent
financing while promoting preservation of this attractive
neighborhood represents tremendous community impact.”
West
Wood Village just finished digging out from winter storm Nemo, a
blizzard for the record books. Howard said the 30 inches of snow that
fell in Plymouth was compounded by gusty winds, which knocked out
power. With drifts well up onto the windows of homes, many of the
elderly residents were essentially trapped.
A
year from now, Howard said the community will be better equipped to
handle such a storm.
“We’re
purchasing the right equipment, we’ve got the right attitude and we
should be in good shape to handle it,” Howard said, noting that as
residents have gotten to know one another better through the purchase
process, they’ve become more apt to help out their neighbors. “We
have a plan to handle that type of situation, we’ll just hire
additional people plus the person we have working here to take care
of it.”
Cooperative
ownership of mobile home parks as a way of preserving affordable
communities is a priority for several national non-profit
organizations that in 2008 formed ROC USA to make resident-owned
communities viable nationwide. ROC USA is sponsored by the Ford
Foundation, NeighborWorks® America, NCB Capital Impact, the
Corporation for Enterprise Development, and the New Hampshire
Community Loan Fund. The Community Loan Fund, a non-profit community
development financial institution in New Hampshire, leveraged its
experience with 103 resident-owned communities in that state to
launch ROC USA with national partners in 2008.
ROC
USA is a non-profit organization with a national network of eight
organizations such as CDI and a national financing source for
resident-owned communities. “We solve the two basic barriers to
resident ownership – access to expert technical assistance and
financing to help homeowners become buyers when their community is
for sale,” said Paul Bradley, ROC USA’s founding president.
ROC
USA Network has helped 45 communities preserve nearly 3,000 homes in
13 states since its launch in May 2008.
www.rocusa.org
The
Cooperative Development Institute is a regional cooperative
development center, founded in 1994, which has assisted dozens of new
and existing cooperatives throughout New England and New York. It is
involved in cooperative housing as well as agriculture, consumer,
worker-owner, energy, and fishing cooperatives. For rural senior
co-op development, CDI received support from the Cooperative
Development Foundation.
www.cdi.coop
###
