Community to feature manufactured homes
LAUREL -- If everything goes as planned, a 43-acre plot just west of Trap Pond State Park will become the site of a manufactured-home community -- one with a difference.
The economic model behind the proposed New Horizons community could help Delaware cope with its chronic lack of affordable housing if it takes hold here, as it has in other states.
In traditional manufactured-home communities, residents own their homes but rent the land beneath them. This puts them in a difficult position when lot rents rise beyond their ability to pay, and it has led to calls for the General Assembly to enact rent-justification laws and other measures to protect tenants.
But the proposed New Horizons Cooperative community will be operated by the nonprofit Diamond State Community Land Trust. Low- and moderate-income residents would purchase the homes at an affordable price and receive a 99-year, perpetually renewable lease.
Although the trust retains ownership of the land, the lease grants the homeowners and their descendants exclusive use of it. Mortgage payments and property taxes are the responsibility of the owners, who gain the tax benefits of the mortgage interest deduction.
When a homeowner decides to sell, the land trust will appraise the home, calculate a resale price and either purchase it and resell it to an income-qualified buyer or help the owner sell it to a qualified buyer.
A portion of the home's appreciation in value will go back to the land trust, thus allowing the trust to keep the property affordable for the next buyer.
"Based on what it's done in other places in the country, I think it's definitely going to take root," said Van Temple, executive director of the Diamond State Community Land Trust.
Temple predicted that within three to five years the land trust model will provide "a fairly substantial inventory of affordable homes, and in 10 years everyone will know it as a permanent part of affordable housing in Delaware."
That has long been the case in Vermont, where state law requires owners of mobile-home parks who are planning to sell to offer them first to a nonprofit.
The story of moderate-income people being priced out of the market in coastal Sussex County also has a familiar ring to Vermonters.
"One of our big areas that we serve is right at sort of the doorstep to a major ski resort," said Preston Jump, executive director of the Central Vermont Community Land Trust in Barre.
"We've sort of got the same issues [as Delaware], with the competition of the second-home market and people being crowded out of reasonable commuting locales," Jump said.
Jump's land trust operates four mobile-home parks, along with rental apartments and a roster of services designed to promote affordable housing.
But due to a quirk in Vermont law, the requirement that park owners first offer their property to a nonprofit applies only to trailer parks: communities with traditional trailers, not manufactured and modular homes that are put on a permanent foundation.
Jump said he plans to work with state legislators to craft a change in the law, and he hopes the land trust will be able to establish communities similar to what is being planned for Laurel -- though based on a cooperative ownership model instead of a community land trust.
A number of residents of privately owned Delaware manufactured-home communities are exploring the idea of buying out the owners and establishing a co-op.
That leaves New Horizons as what could be the first in an emerging trend for homeownership in Delaware.
According to Temple, the 43-acre site off Wooten Road just west of Trap Pond State Park is under contract, but the purchase has not yet been completed. He would not disclose the selling price, but said, "We're getting a fair deal."
New Horizons, which is expected to open in 2009, will be set up to help those whose finances make it difficult to buy a home.
Two-thirds of the homes will be sold to households with incomes at 50 percent of the area's median income or below, with the rest going to households between 50 percent and 80 percent of the median income.
The area median income in Sussex County is $53,800.
The first 12 families to purchase homes in New Horizons are expected to be former residents of the Dogwood Mobile Home Park near Georgetown who were evicted three years ago when the owner closed the park.
Those residents tried to buy the park and form a co-op to do so, and although that failed the group stuck together, according to Gina Miserendino of the Delaware Housing Coalition.
"We've been working as technical assistance provider and just kind of the wind at their backs," Miserendino said.
Miserendino said she sees the community land trust model as one that could take hold in Delaware, calling it "a good stop on the continuum of housing."
"We think it's a very viable model to pursue. The sheer economics alone: For example, if there are government funds going into it, the subsidy occurs only once," Miserendino said.
The Diamond State Housing Coalition also is working to establish a 36-unit single-family-home community in Milford.
That project, dubbed the Village at Colony South, will be a mix of community land trust homes and homes that will be sold with the land as well.
Jump said Vermont has long tilted toward "the notion of the public's right or the public's interest of preserving a certain portion of land in perpetuity for affordable housing."
Vermont is known for its progressive politics, and what is politically palatable in the Green Mountain State might not go down well in the First State.
However, he said, the need for affordable housing is real, and one way or another it becomes a matter of public policy.
"The bottom line somewhere, some way, is the public picks up the tab."
Contact J.L. Miller at 678-4271 or jlmiller@dela
