Midwest ROCs

NCF is a founding nonprofit partner organization of the ROC USA Network. As a ROC USA Certified Technical Assistance Provider (CTAP), NCF has helped residents of fourteen manufactured home communities purchase their communities through the “Resident Owned Community” (ROC) model.

A ROC is a neighborhood of manufactured homes where the land is owned by the residents through a co-op. Residents work with NCF to buy the land from the existing owner. Residents continue to own their own homes individually and an equal share of the land beneath the entire neighborhood.

Residents vote on a board of directors (similar to an HOA) to oversee the operation of the community. Everything is decided through democratic vote, giving residents the ability to have decision making power on rent amount, beautification and landscaping efforts, infrastructure improvements, and more.

The service area for NCF’s Midwest ROC Program is Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Across our three-state service area, there are approximately 136,000 units of manufactured housing across 2,600 manufactured home communities.

• Minnesota: 805 communities, 44,900 units

• Wisconsin: 1,260 communities, 55,400 units

• Iowa: 555 communities, 35,500 units

At NCF, we believe that cooperative ownership delivers an important platform for asset building, autonomy, security, and democratic control. In a land-lease manufactured housing community, it begins with resident purchase. Once residents achieve shared ownership of the land beneath their homes, cooperative members can elect their own leaders, reinvest their lot rents in capital improvements, and return any excess profits to themselves in patronage dividends. 

At the individual level, households find a new incentive to invest in their homes and landscaping around their homes when they know the community cannot be sold for redevelopment by an investor. With direct control of the land beneath their homes, cooperative members are in a better position to attract home financing on competitive terms from lenders. Better financing builds value and helps protect residents against depreciation.[1] 

Resident ownership of manufactured housing communities:

• Converts tenants to owners with a direct voice in the governance of their own communities;

• Replaces chronic displacement risk with long-term security;

• Replaces returns to investors with returns to residents in better infrastructure, more stable and lower lot rents over time, better home financing, and homes selling more quickly for higher prices;

• Builds a strengthened sense of community as residents work together on issues of common concern.
  

[1] Independent studies carried out by the Carsey Institute in New Hampshire (2006) found that residents’ homes in cooperatively owned communities sell more quickly for more value than homes in comparable investor-owned communities.