SEVEN DAYS – Paul Heintz
March 7, 2012
For years, Henry Benedict and his neighbors battled the owner of the Swanton mobile-home park where they live. They fought over rent increases. They fought over water and sewage fees. They fought over maintenance issues. Then, one day last May, Benedict and the 26 other families who live in the Homestead Acres mobile-home park received letters in the mail saying the owner was putting the 50-acre property up for sale. So they did something crazy: They formed a co-op and bought the place themselves. “Everything happened real fast for us,” says Benedict, who works for the town of Highgate’s recreation department. “There was no time to think about it.” When the newly named Homestead Acres Cooperative closed on the property in December, it joined the leading edge of a national movement to empower mobile-home residents by helping them buy the properties on which they live. Last month, a mobile-home park in Milton joined Homestead Acres and a park in Windsor to become the third cooperatively owned park established in Vermont in recent years. The emerging trend is a significant development for the nearly 7000 Vermont families who live in mobile-home parks. While 80 percent of them own their dwellings, 70 percent live in for-profit parks where they have little leverage over the rent they pay for their lots. Despite the name, mobile-homes aren’t all that cheap or easy to move, so when rent goes up or the park changes hands, residents are left hoping for the best. “We’re kind of stuck here,” says Benedict, sitting on a recliner in the living room of the 14-by-80-foot home he purchased a decade ago. “If you live in a trailer, you can’t just pick up and move.” Link to Full Seven Days Article This Land Is Your Land
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