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It’s one thing to read news articles or a consultant’s report about affordable housing to get an idea of the current housing crisis. It’s quite another thing to stand in the driveway of a woman who looks older than her 63 years as she sweeps up pine needles and gestures towards her mid-size SUV and tells me that’s where she’d live if the rent in her mobile home park increased. Her teenage son and his friend would have to figure out something else.
It’s quite another thing to hear a woman cheerfully describe how much she and her husband enjoy where they live and then watch her expression change to a sober and distant gaze when asked what options they would have if their mobile home park was sold and they had to move.
And it’s still yet another thing to receive a text message on Christmas day from Tom, a man I spoke with six weeks earlier telling me that he is a single father with two sons. And that if his rent went up just $50, he would be forced to live in his camper. That is what was on Tom’s mind Christmas Day 2021. The housing crisis is so much more than data and strategies. It is peoples’ lives. People I recognize as valuable members of this community.
In Bozeman more than 200 manufactured homes were eliminated when four different mobile home parks were razed to allow development of high-end condos. If an average of 2.5 people lived in those 200 units, an estimated 500 people were displaced. Currently any affordable housing being built is far beyond the reach of those who were evicted. I know this because I have met some of those who were evicted. And the plea, “I have nowhere else to go.” from an elderly resident still rings in my ears from when developers began evicting mobile home residents in north Bozeman. These events in Bozeman’s history are what led me to begin a door-to-door survey of residents in MHPs. I needed to know what became of those displaced and what would happen to others faced with the same situation. This is how I met Tom and numerous other remarkable people willing to share their stories and personal information about their housing concerns.
This is also how it became clear that preservation, and in particular preservation of MHPs, is critical in keeping valuable members of a community housed. Mobile home parks are sometimes preferred but often the only option or the last resort for housing stability for many Montanans. Destroying them is economically devastating and socially disruptive. In this work, I became familiar NeighborWorksMT. NWMT is a nonprofit based in Great Falls that provides housing education and assistance including facilitating homeowner purchases of mobile home parks — referred to as Resident Owned Cooperatives (ROCs). Structured similar to cooperatives, ROCs are an intelligent example of housing stability that allow owners of manufactured homes to purchase the park on which their home sits. This assures ownership security against property being sold out from under them, unwarranted rent increases or other threats to their housing stability.
I welcomed the news that Gov. Gianforte created a task force to address the affordable housing crisis and appreciate the hard work before them. It is my hope they will take a hard look at preservation in general and ROCs specifically. There is not one single solution to the affordable housing crisis. However, the task force would be insincere in its work if it did not include a strong preservation component. Effective actions would include promoting ROCs throughout the state, facilitating right of first refusal for manufactured homeowners and repealing House Bill 259 that was signed into law during the 2021 Legislature which created obstacles to developing affordable housing. Members of the task force are also welcome to join me in my door-to-door surveying to gain insight from the people living in housing threatened by developers and investors.
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Connie Lange is an advocate for affordable housing and serves on the HRDC’s Housing and Homelessness Advisory Council.
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