One of the most difficult obstacles facing manufactured home communities is the continued cost of maintaining and preserving their privately owned infrastructure, such as roads, sewer, and water systems. While individual states such as Minnesota have created infrastructure grant programs specifically to help communities improve their aging infrastructure, the federal government had no such funding available.

However, just before the new year, the United States Congress passed into law the new Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement (PRICE) program, the first programmatic community-level investment by the federal government in manufactured housing and resident-owned communities. As a subcomponent of a recent Biden Administration proposal to cut homelessness by 25% by 2025, the PRICE program will provide $225 million to support the resiliency and preservation of manufactured housing and manufactured housing communities. This level of funding also includes $25 million to provide grants to assist in the redevelopment of manufactured housing communities as replacement housing that is affordable. Further, the most recent Congressional spending bill includes funding for up to $2.5 million for technical assistance for recipients of grants under the PRICE program to strengthen urban and rural communities, Tribal communities, and areas prone to natural disasters.

While this funding is welcomed by manufactured housing communities across the country, it did not materialize without a lot of hard work and advocacy from manufactured housing residents. Marjory Gilsrud, who serves as an ROC Association Director and Board President at Madelia Mobile Village Cooperative in Madelia, Minnesota, personally lobbied her state’s congressional representatives in support of this measure. While details about the program itself are still being worked out by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), you can read more about the process of enacting PRICE into law here. As more details become available from HUD about the program, we will be sure to share those with our cooperative communities. So, keep a lookout for further updates about PRICE.