Important housing bill signed into law

Part of a weekly series

The Housing Solutions Partnership has been working with a Northwest-based company that assists manufactured homeowners. 

Established in 2008, ROC Northwest is a program of the Northwest Cooperative Development Center serving residents of Manufactured Housing Communities (MHCs) across Washington and Idaho. They have been working to foster resident ownership for more than 30 years and support more than 200 communities. 

ROC Northwest helps residents for cooperative businesses secure financing and purchase the housing community in which they live. The outcomes of successful transitions have proven to increase property values/tax base, improve living conditions and provide security with an affordable living situation. 

Last year the news reported that dozens of residents at OakCrest Mobile Village in Coeur d’Alene were in jeopardy of being displaced due to the inability to control lot rents after the sale of the property to a national corporation. 

In response, I recently worked with Victoria O’Banion with ROC Northwest and Rep. Elaine Price to sponsor legislation in Idaho that would require mobile home park owners to notify their tenants before they entered into an agreement to sell their property. 

The goal was to give the tenants who had taken the initiative to organize as a business entity and acquire financing an opportunity to make an offer on the property their homes sat on before it was too late. We are happy to announce the HB590 Resident Owned Community Notification has been signed into law. 

If you have family or friends who live in MHCs, please encourage them to check out our website and complete the form: https://rocnorthwest.com/residents/ 

This is how we will be able to get them information to form a business to own their own real estate as a community. 

This is one item of the Housing Solutions Partnership ToolKit that doesn’t solve the housing crisis but can make a dramatic change in housing security and affordability for some Idaho residents. The Partnership continues to seek creative and effective solutions. 

For more information: Housingni.org or rocnorthwest.com.