Resident-Owned Resilience: Can Cooperative Land Ownership Enable Transformative Climate Adaptation for Manufactured Housing Communities?

Abstract

Residents of manufactured housing communities (MHCs) are disproportionately vulnerable to both hazards and displacement. The cooperative ownership model of resident-owned communities (ROCs) pioneered by ROC USA helps MHC residents resist displacement, but little research assesses how cooperative tenure impacts hazard vulnerability. To fill this gap, we conduct a spatial analysis of 234 ROC USA sites; analyze the co-op conversion process; and interview ROC USA staff, technical assistance providers, and resident co-op leaders. Although ROC USA communities, like other MHCs, face elevated exposure and sensitivity to hazards, we find that ROC USA’s model supports communities’ adaptive capacity by increasing access to financial resources, bridging formal and informal knowledge and skills, and improving social and institutional capacity. This networked cooperative model represents a scalable form of transformative adaptation by enabling low-income communities to address the underlying causes of uneven hazard vulnerabilities that are intensifying under climate change. We close with public policy and programmatic recommendations to enhance and expand this model.

Keywords:

• mobile homes
• manufactured housing
• land tenure
• climate change
• hazards
• housing cooperatives

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Lawrence Vale (MIT) for his early and sustained support for this project, Carolina Reid (University of California, Berkeley) for her comments on a draft of this article, and Natasha Cheong (University of Toronto), Osamu Kumasaka (MIT), and Logan Leeds (Cornell) for their research assistance. We also appreciate the staff at ROC USA, technical assistance providers, and housing cooperative leaders who shared their time and knowledge with us. We sincerely thank Michael Donnelly and Steven Guggenmos at Freddie Mac for sharing data from their 2019 report. Finally, we thank the two anonymous reviewers whose close reading and comments helped us to clarify and strengthen our arguments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. According to industry groups, some 37% of new manufactured housing units are placed in manufactured housing communities (MHCs), also known as mobile home parks or trailer parks. The remaining 63% are on private land (MHI, 2020).

2. The concept of climate resilience has been critiqued as glorifying self-sufficiency among the poor (Davoudi, 2018), but grassroots and other advocates have embraced the term and define it as addressing underlying drivers of climate vulnerability (Shi, 2020).

3. Census-defined metropolitan statistical areas include less dense, exurban areas. Nonetheless, at the regional scale, the housing and labor markets of these exurban areas are closely related to those of more conventionally defined, high density urban areas, which is one reason why they are identified in White House Office of Management and Budget metropolitan statistical area classifications.

4. The ROC model’s strength in New Hampshire exemplifies path dependency in planning and development processes (Sorensen, 2015). In the mid 1980s, leaders at the NHCLF and the University of New Hampshire developed the co-op model using a supportive state legislative environment and access to philanthropic capital from a religious organization. After the success of early co-op conversions, the adoption of the model accelerated because of a change of state law requiring MHC sellers to provide residents with notice and an opportunity for purchase (Bradley interview). A recent podcast episode produced by ROC USA tells this story in greater depth (ROC USA, 2021).

5. Whereas some observers may regard the presence of relatively high-density MHCs in hazard-prone environments as problematic, the relationship between density and vulnerability can be complex. In many cases, increasing local density can actually reduce the per-household cost of collective hazard mitigation (e.g., fire suppression or local flood mitigation infrastructure).

Additional information

Funding

Funding from the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT, along with Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning, and University of Toronto’s Department of Geography and Planning, supported this research.

Notes on contributors

Zachary Lamb

Zachary Lamb is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at University of California Berkeley. His research focuses on how urban design and planning shape uneven impacts from and adaptations to climate change.

Linda Shi

Linda Shi is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. Her research examines how land governance institutions shape the equity and justice of climate adaptation.

Stephanie Silva

Stephanie Silva is a Master in City Planning candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Her work focuses on the design and implementation of more equitable climate adaptation and housing plans.

Jason Spicer

Jason Spicer is an assistant professor in the urban planning program at the University of Toronto. He researches alternative economic ownership and governance models.