In a new report for Financial Times, Rana Foroohar explores why manufactured homes increasingly appeal not only to prospective residents, but also to investors. “But as big money has entered the sector, so have high-profile complaints: from tenants and activists concerned about rent spikes and poor maintenance under their new owners, to lower-income people, forced to choose between paying rent or medical costs,” Foroohar writes.
One emerging solution is the growing movement to help lower-income people hang on to their homes by turning older mobile-home parks, that might otherwise be sold to large investors, into resident-owned communities, or ROCs. Foroohar calls one such ROC, Clackamas River Community Cooperative near Portland, Oregon a “model of resident-owned manufactured housing.” Clackamas is one of 255 ROCs in the ROC USA® network.