Bellingham residents work to purchase own mobile home park, operate as co-op

A group of Bellingham manufactured-home park residents are in the process of buying their park and continuing to operate it as a limited equity housing cooperative, effectively preventing the park residents from being displaced and the land further developed.

Samish Mobile Home Park, located at 119 N. Samish Way, was recently listed for sale by property owner Michael Reams for $5.1 million. Residents were given the priority to purchase the park, per a recently enacted city ordinance.

The residents voted Dec. 10 to purchase the 3-acre park, which was built in 1959. The residents elected five new board members. About 75 percent of the park’s residents were represented at the meeting, according to those in attendance.

Preserving a way of life

“We never expected this to happen. When we heard the notice from the association, we were really excited,” Samish Mobile Home Park resident Marcos Carrillo told The Bellingham Herald.

Carrillo has lived at the park for seven years after he bought his home there. He notified his neighbors about the opportunity to purchase the property and rallied their support. He described the park as quiet and a great place to raise children. It’s close to a bus stop for the kids who attend school nearby.

“It’s safe and we don’t have any troubles there,” Carrillo said.

Carrillo said the park residents would be at risk of displacement if the park was purchased by a developer who may choose to build on the land and price out the existing residents. The manufactured homes on the site are not easily transportable, Carrillo said, despite the name ‘mobile home.’ Moving would also be taxing on the families and elderly residents.

“We don’t have any place to move if this is not going to happen,” Carrillo said. “If somebody else is going to buy the property, we don’t know what is their plan.”

The purchase isn’t permanent yet, as the property is under contract for 90 days following the Dec. 10 meeting. Financing from banks, various loans, and grants will be combined before the final closing.

But if everything goes through, Samish Mobile Home Park will become a collective, resident-owned cooperative (ROC) in which the residents will be responsible for park maintenance, oversight of the annual budget and vendor management.

A program called ROC Northwest is helping to facilitate the purchase. It’s part of the nonprofit organization Northwest Cooperative Development Center (NWCDC), which is focused on building affordable housing through cooperative ownership in Washington and North Idaho using the ROC-USA model.

The organization helps residents “run the numbers” to see if a purchase makes sense. It also works with nonprofit lenders to secure funding for these purchases.

The residents are offering between $4.5 million and $5.1 million to purchase Samish Mobile Home Park, according to Victoria O’Banion of NWCDC. O’Banion told The Herald the offer would likely be accepted.

“The residents at Samish are energized and excited to become owners of this parcel,” O’Banion said. “Empowering is the best word that we have but it also doesn’t do justice to what we do. These residents have power and it’s giving voice to their power.”

Protecting local housing affordability

In 2022, as a result of increasing concerns related to housing affordability and availability in Bellingham, the city was the first in the state to create protections for residents of manufactured home parks, who are at risk of price hikes or relocations when their land is sold.

The Washington State Legislature then followed Bellingham’s model and enacted the protections as state law which says that when a manufactured home park owner decides to sell, the land must first be offered for sale to the residents — though it’s not a guarantee.

Residents of the Samish Mobile Home Park are the first in the city to take advantage of the protections and move forward in the process of purchasing their park. Bellingham has ten manufactured home parks in the city.

Residents at another manufactured-home community in the city, Lakeway Mobile Estates, a 55-and-older community located at 1200 Lincoln St., are also interested in pursuing ownership after the park was recently listed for sale.

“I’m glad to see it is working as we intended,” said Bellingham City Council President and Ward 6 Representative Michael Lilliquist in a statement to The Herald.

The city of Bellingham told The Herald it “is here to support the process however we can.”

Margo Hammond and Wendy Scherrer of the Happy Valley Neighborhood Association and co-chairs of the Housing Committee have been educating manufactured home residents about the risks associated with the sale of a park to a developer.

“Nationwide, we’ve seen this trend of people buying up these mobile home parks. And they either can up the rent and keep them as a mobile home park,” Sherrer said. “Or also you could just build apartments there.”

Hammond and Sherrer have been working to preserve and promote affordable housing in manufactured home parks since the city of Bellingham established these protections.

“They can allow tenants to focus on bills and debt, not to focus on avoiding eviction. It can address problems of increased homelessness in the community at large due to high rent prices and it can also give them an opportunity to work together as a community and make decisions for themselves,” Hammond told The Herald.

Carrillo said he is proud of how his community has come together and is excited to see how it develops moving forward.

“It’s going to be a little extra work but at the end of the day, it’s going to be successful and that’s going to be great. It doesn’t matter how many hours we’re gonna spend or how many days we have to spend working together. We are one,” Carrillo said.