Spokane is like most other places in the United States. It doesn’t have enough housing that lower and middle-income people can afford. That problem is not likely to be solved anytime soon. But there are places where people are chipping away at it.
Last week, residents of the Takesa Village manufactured home park in Mead gathered with some visitors for a group photo in front of the new addition to their community.
Interviews edited for clarity and brevity.
The visitors included three Spokane-area state legislators and Sarah Ben Olson, the executive director at Village Co-Housing Works.
Sarah Ben Olson: It's a 780-square-foot home, two-bedroom. It's an open-floor plan, so it makes the most of a small amount of space. We chose this home model because it is the most energy-efficient home model on the market. It is net-zero ready, is what they call it. Avista partners with us to put a whole-home heat pump on these houses so that the cost of heating and cooling is under $100 all year long," she said. "We wanted these homes to be long-term, affordable, and permanent. And the best way to do that is to make sure they're really well-built.
Doug Nadvornick: What does a house like this cost today?
SBO: If somebody wanted to buy this, you know, on the market, commercially, without the land, it would be about $100,000, $120,000. We're selling them for under $100,000. And we hope to keep that price stable. The way we're doing that is with a lot of volunteer time and just making sure that we're keeping our costs low. So we're working with contractors to get a deal when we install these homes.
DN: Will the buyer of this house have to pay a lot fee?
SBO: Yes. Takesa Village has the most affordable lot rent in the state, $380. It will cover their sewer water, and it will also cover all the infrastructure upgrades that need to happen here. So it's like an HOA fee. They'll be paying that in addition to their mortgage, so yeah.
Sarah Ben Olson’s organization developed a partnership with Takesa Village. Takesa is a cooperative owned by its members. It has about 20 vacant spaces for new homes. Village Cohousing buys the mobile homes for those spaces.
SBO: They are allowing us, as a nonprofit, to install new homes in their neighborhood at no cost. They're not charging us any development fees at all. And then we resell them to low-income households. That's the relationship. It's just a partnership of two great community-centered nonprofits. This is our first project. We're intending it as sort of a pilot project to demonstrate the viability of it. But really, up until this year, Takesa Village was the only resident-owned manufactured home park in eastern Washington, and so I know that we have a new one, I think, over here in Mead that's been incorporating right now. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of just like a whole lot of manufactured home parks taking over their neighborhoods. And when that happens, then they have the ability to invite an organization like ours in to revitalize it with new homes.
DN: You said something, that mobile homes are one of the last frontiers when it comes to affordable housing. Do you anticipate that this is going to be the model for at least a little while while this is true?
SBO: When manufactured homes are in a resident-owned community, their rent is stable because the residents vote on the rent together. And the houses are so much more affordable because they're built in a factory off-site, they can be built quickly. And so we're looking at like a month, a couple of months turnaround between ordering a home, getting it installed, and the costs per square foot are like 40% the cost of a site-built home. If we can have more land secured by nonprofit cooperatives like this one, then it could be a very feasible path forward for affordable home ownership to grow in eastern Washington.
DN: There's long been a stigma about houses like this. Is that stigma going away, or is it still a problem?
SBO: Both. It's still a problem. There's this perception of manufactured housing that is like a vestige from the 1960s when there wasn't any federal oversight over the construction of these homes. Since the mid-1970s, there's been every manufactured home has to be independently inspected and approved by HUD. So, every single manufactured home is inspected in a way that our site-built homes are not.
So, it's an unfair stigma, but it's also a stigma about low-income housing generally, which is when people aren't able to secure loans to improve their homes, then they won't be able to replace the roof when it needs it. And that's the case for most manufactured housing, is people aren't able to access the home equity line of credit that people who have a standard mortgage are able to access.
DN: What's the process for buying one of these?
SBO: It's a many-month process. Usually people are referred by word of mouth, and they'll go to our website and fill out a simple eligibility form. It's very basic. And then we'll reach out to them, usually with some follow-up questions, and then either suggest other opportunities that might be available for them. If we think they're a good candidate for our program, we'll refer them to classes. All of our home buyers take about 7 hours of financial education, which is all free. And then we work with them one-on-one over many months to prepare all of their financial documents before they actually apply to New America.
We met Tina McKinstry. She lives here too and serves on the Takesa Village board of directors.
Tina McKinstry: People think of trailer park boys or RVs and a lot of tires and padding or, you know, paneling on the side of a building. No, we're real people in real homes. These are real homes. A lot of them were built in the 80s and 90s, just like your stick-built counterparts. We have jobs. We deserve the same rights as everybody else and our stick-built counterparts and a safe place to call home. Getting financing on a home that's built to code, they're all built to code, and gives you the ability to buy a home when you're working.
$20 an hour is not a lot of money anymore when a median income home is what, $500,000 to $700,000? No, we want to be able to have a home, have a life, buy a nice car, and not put all of our money, you know, being mortgage-rich and having nothing else because you have a house. Yeah, this should count as a house and home in the eyes of everybody.
DN: Paint a mental picture for me of what your community is all about.
TM: We're 215 sites. We currently have 20 vacant lots. About 180 families live here, so times that, the average home holds about four. We have two community pools. We have a clubhouse, a garage, an office, and we keep our costs down. Our site rent is only $380 a month. Most corporate-owned, manufactured home communities are jacked up from $9,000 to $1,000 when all they're covering is the dirt you're seeing that you're standing on. They don't do any repairs on the home itself. That's all up to the homeowner.
But we maintain the streets. We use our time to save all of that money because we clean each other's yards. We help our elderly. We recently had a junk and dump. We used to bring in dumpsters. Well, we decided it was harder on our elderly members, so we told everybody, you get a five-by-seven square at the end of your driveway. We'll get volunteers to help you bring it out. Junk and dump came and picked up all that stuff that you just can't put in your trash can. So having that money and keeping it here, it doesn't go into anybody else's pocket, but ours.
And then right now, we're working on a big thing. We want a playground because there's nowhere for the kids to play other than vacant lots or their own little yard. So we're working on trying to get a playground put in. It'll cost us about $150,000. And then our kids have somewhere to go. So it's just keeping that money here, making it like a 1950s community where you come out, you know your neighbor, you're like, hey, 'Nice to see you. What do you need?' Because I miss that.
I'm not originally from Spokane. And when I moved to the city, people don't make eye contact. They're generally not very friendly. When we grew up in Birch Bay or smaller areas, you knew everybody. You said, hi, hey, what do you need? Let me go to the store for you. And really want that here because we're community involved. We vote on our rules. We vote on our budget. And we discuss what we want to do and not do with the money that we raise just through our rents and paying our bills.
DN: Is it a safe place, a stable place?
TM: It takes time. When we first took it over, it was really not well maintained and neglected. And some of the residents were not of the best caliber because they just kind of landed into a home because nobody wanted to buy it. But we've worked really hard since 2016. I think we only have about two or three trouble homes left.
But now it's safe. I don't feel, I'm not scared to walk out here at night at all. No matter, you know, we have neighbors' dogs. We have a Facebook page. Hey, Jane, your dog's out. Or Sam's dog's been out 10 times this month. And the rules guys, well, I'll send him a notice. So we're all just kind of involved and maybe know too much of each other's business. But in another way, it's a benefit because we're there for each other if something bad happens.
DN: You have about 20 empty spaces?
TM: Currently, right now, we have 20 vacant lots. There seems to be more of an interest now in manufactured home communities. And because we're cooperative and we have the cheapest rent anywhere, more and more people are like, oh, I could buy a manufactured home, sell my home, take that equities, put $150,000, $200,000 into a nice double-wide, move on here and retire. My neighbors did that. They sold their ranch in Oregon, bought a really nice double-wide and moved in next door to me. And that's how they retired. Their home was paid for.
And so we're starting to get more interest, but we think we may just hold these homes for VCW (Village Cohousing Works) because we'd rather see it go to families that are struggling, who can't just drop $150,000, $200,000 on a home, but need that extra assistance through VCW and first-time home buyers and all of that to get them into a home.
DN: Does your board get a chance to help to vet the people who come in here?
TM: Yeah, everybody who lives here is required to go through a background check process, which is pretty standard for anywhere you live. So we do background checks, and we meet with them and inform them, you know, we're a cooperative, so you don't just get to move in and ignore us. You got to participate. You got to be part of our social programs or our lunch program or help me in the pools or clean a yard or do something with the newsletter. But, yeah, you can help out. It's amazing what you can do when you can't do anything, even just watching out for your neighbors.
DN: Do you feel like you're sort of on the cutting edge here?
TM: I do. I feel that the stigma to manufacturing home communities is starting to be lifted due to a lot of hard work from everybody getting out there saying, hey, this is what we are, this is who we are. This is not what you think it is. We're real people, real items, real families, real communities. And, you know, our homes, we actually have more yard than some people in San Francisco, so it's a really nice neighborhood, and we watch the speeds and, yeah, we're kind of in charge of our own little world. We have our own little piece.
The Takesa Village Homeowners Cooperative and Village Cohousing Works successfully worked with Spokane legislators Mike Volz and Marcus Riccelli this year to change Washington state law. It allows non-profit organizations like Village Cohousing to sell up to a dozen manufactured homes a year without having to get one of the expensive business licenses that for-profit manufactured home dealers must buy.
Sarah Ben Olson from Village Cohousing Works says that will allow her organization to keep costs down and increase the number of homes they can buy and sell.
