Oregon Non-Profit To Save Another Aging Mobile Home Park, Preserve Housing For Low-Income, Lot-Leasing Homeowners; Group To Buy Out Current Landlord, Make Significant Infrastructure Improvements While Avoiding Displacement Of Any Residents

In Saginaw, Oregon, The Register-Guard reports:

• The St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County is furthering its efforts to buy and rehabilitate ­mobile home parks for low-income ­tenants with the purchase of the Saginaw Trailer Park north of ­Cottage Grove, the nonprofit organization’s spokesman said.(1)
  
  The mobile home park will be St. Vincent’s sixth such purchase, spokesman Paul Neville said. The organization is striving to preserve the shrinking stock of trailer parks, which provide affordable housing for low-­income families, he said.(2)
  
  St. Vincent also invites social workers to each park it acquires to work with residents on issues such as alcohol and drug addiction, health care and financial management, Neville said.
  
  “The social services component is really essential to ­changing the culture in the parks and improving the quality of life for the people who are there,” he said.
  
  The organization, which is buying the park from a private owner, plans to close on the purchase by the end of April. Neville declined to specify the sale price. The seller is Oakland resident Michael Brown, who has been an owner of the park since 2007.
  
  St. Vincent paid more than $1.7 million to acquire a ­mobile home park in Junction City in January 2016. The agency ­secured a $1 million grant from the state and a $1 million low-interest loan from Banner Bank to buy the 43-space Tivoli ­Mobile Home Park.
  
  The Saginaw Trailer Park is off Highway 99 about three miles north of Cottage Grove. The park has 41 mobile homes and RVs; about 30 are occupied, Neville said. St. Vincent will replace the trailers that are dilapidated and no longer fit for occupancy, he said.
  
  “Many of these are not places that you’d normally want people to live in,” Neville said. “So we will, as we can afford to, start taking out the old trailers and removing the old RVs and replacing them with new units.”
  
  St. Vincent will not displace any of the tenants, he said. But some may be temporarily housed in other units while St. Vincent ­purchases new homes.
  
  The organization also will make infrastructure improvements at the mobile home park, including paving the roadway and installing storm sewers, as well as making improvements to the septic ­system, Neville said.
  
  In the past, the park’s managers have been fined by the state Department of Environmental Quality for failing to maintain the septic sewer system and improperly dumping ­partially treated sewage.
  
  Neville said the park’s troubled past is one reason St. Vincent is purchasing it. “We want to take a park that’s been problematic for the people living in it and the surrounding area and make improvements that will make it a better place to live, and a better place for people to live near,” he said.
  
  Neville said St. Vincent other trailer park acquisitions have been successful ...

For more, see St. Vincent de Paul buying Saginaw Trailer Park north of Cottage Grove.

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(1) St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County is Lane County, Oregon’s largest nonprofit human services organization that, among other things, helps more than 84,000 individuals and families each year with emergency and homeless services, and affordable housing. St. Vincent de Paul's mission is to provide comprehensive programs to alleviate poverty and help all individuals find a path out of poverty and into self-sufficiency.

(2) See, generally, Save mobile home parks.