Epping residents preserve their affordable homes
by News
on December 13, 2021
The homeowners in Evans Mobile Home Park in Epping, N.H. recently purchased their 21-unit park, making it New Hampshire’s 140th resident-owned community (ROC). Under cooperative ownership, the residents’ homes are now secure—the park won’t be sold to a developer—and they have a voice in the community’s rules, repairs, and rent.
Using training and technical assistance from the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund’s ROC-NH™ team, homeowners organized and formed Evans Cooperative in April 2021. The cooperative then reached a $400,000 purchase price with the park’s owner, John Holcombe, and finalized the deal Nov. 16 with a mortgage from the Community Loan Fund.
From left, Evans Cooperative Treasurer Chester Butcher, President Andrea Nelson, Operations Manager John Slater, and Vice President Debbie Slater.
According to Evans Cooperative President Andrea Nelson, “We came together to buy our park because we love our community, wanted to keep people in their homes, and make sure that new families would have an affordable place to call home. We didn’t want it sold and turned into a big sand pit. Affordable housing is what we’re all about.”
“Affordable housing is a crisis across New Hampshire,” said Community Loan Fund President Steve Saltzman. “Epping’s proximity to our major hubs made the park attractive to private investors who might have bought and closed the park, to use the land for a different purpose. The risk of eviction for these families was real.”
With the median home listing price in N.H. hovering over $400,000, manufactured homes, with an average price of $80,000, represent affordable home ownership for working families, young couples, people with disabilities, and seniors. Evans Cooperative has four lots ready for new manufactured homes. Throughout N.H. there are approximately 275 vacant lots in ROCs.
Now that Evans Cooperative is resident-owned, homeowners there are also eligible for products and services, like real mortgages, that haven’t been available to them. Studies show that the availability of home financing, when the land is secure, improve the home’s value, the owner’s ability to make improvements, and overall housing affordability.
For 38 years, the Community Loan Fund has worked in towns and cities across N.H. to connect people, families and business owners with the loans, training and advice that allow them to have affordable homes, secure jobs and quality child care, and become more economically stable.
The Community Loan Fund helped homeowners in Meredith create convert N.H.’s first co-op park in 1984. Today, nearly 8,500 homeowners in ROCs in every county have access to home financing, as well as an annual leadership training in which they earn college credit, training conferences, and management guidance for cooperatives.
See a full list of ROCs in New Hampshire.