BIDDEFORD, MAINE—October 25, 2019—This Thursday at the 2019 Annual GrowSmart Maine Summit held in Biddeford, Maine members of the Charter Oaks Village resident owned community gathered to receive one of GrowSmart Maine’s honorary 2019 Smart Growth Awards.
The theme of this year’s summit, “Smart Growth Builds Wellness,” featured regional and national leaders, panelists and presenters discussing ways to ensure that built environments in Maine and beyond were structured at a personal, community and world wide scale to make the places residents live and work healthy, prosperous, inclusive and resilient.
Nancy Smith, GrowSmart Maine executive director, said “The Charter Oaks Village is an outstanding example of how a community can collaborate in an innovative way to find solutions to securing long term affordable housing.”
At the Summit, Charter Oaks Village was recognized for the multiple ways this new resident owned manufactured housing community embodied the principles of smart growth, including—how the community’s layout utilized compact building design; made development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective for residents; fostered a distinctive sense of community and place; and encouraged community stakeholder collaboration in decision making, among other benefits.
Speaking about the recognition, Marcus Baldwin, Charter Oaks Village Board President said, “This award means a lot. The growth we have seen since the purchase [of the park] is obvious if you saw the park before. It is a night and day difference already and we continue to improve weekly, while maintaining affordable living.”
Charter Oaks Villages became a Resident Owned Community in June of 2019, during which time residents, with the support and technical assistance of the Cooperative Development Institute (CDI), acquired the land on the 40 unit Arundel manufactured housing park, helping to preserve the affordable housing community within it.
Baldwin detailed the impacts of this residential ownership model for his community, explaining, “Since developing the cooperative there is a new sense of community here, people are developing friendships with neighbors they never knew before. People here now have a sense that they actually have a say in what happens in our neighborhood instead of just paying rent to someone out of state who doesn’t care about the people living here.”
Ann Lantagne, Board Vice President, echoed Baldwin’s sentiments. “Gaining control of our community has been quite an accomplishment. Receiving this award was an acknowledgement of all of our hard work to make this possible. The recognition made me feel stronger about the future of our community.”
Jeannee Wright, Cooperative Housing Specialist Lead at CDI who provided Charter Oaks with technical assistance spoke about why this particular model is so beneficial.
“Unlike many other forms of affordable housing development,” Wright explained, “ROCs are a private sector solution that pays property taxes and therefore provides needed tax dollars to regional communities to support public needs. Throughout the Country, with the high demand market for real estate; manufactured housing communities are at risk. Homeowners living in these leased lot communities may be vulnerable to high increases in lot rents along with potential land redevelopment leading to park closure and displacement. This Charter Oak Village effort represents when action taken by concerned and empowered homeowners can prevent such a future, preserving the community as a permanently affordable and vibrant and healthy community for everyone now and in the future,”
“I am very happy and excited to see the residents of Charter Oaks Village receive this award, Wright continued. ”The efforts and commitment they have taken to sustain and build a better sense of community in this manufactured housing community is important and rewarding. It definitely deserves recognition. When we see communities built by the people who live in them, we see growth in things like social equity and wellness. Maine has many similar communities that can follow that same path!”
Shannon Staples, Charter Oaks Village Board Secretary who attended the award ceremony at the GrowSmart Summit, also shared her thoughts about the recognition, “Receiving this award was a great feeling as we felt recognized for our hard work accomplishment in becoming a Resident Owned Cooperative. It was also great to tell our story, as we hope others who heard our story know this is a possible opportunity.”
When it became a resident owned community in the summer of 2019, Charter Oaks Village joined eight other Maine manufactured housing communities supported by CDI and financed by Genesis Community Loan Fund, representing 358 homes now under resident control. All of those communities are part of the ROC USA Network, which has helped secure over 15,000 units of affordable housing nation-wide.
Photo of award winners below.
The Cooperative Development Institute is a regional cooperative development center, founded in 1994, which has assisted dozens of new and existing cooperatives throughout New England and New York. It is involved in cooperative housing as well as agriculture, consumer, worker-owner, energy, and fishing cooperatives. To learn more about CDI, visit, www.cdi.coop, and learn more about Maine specific activities, visit the Cooperative Maine Business Alliance website at www.maine.coop.
GrowSmart Maine’s mission is to build lasting prosperity without sacrificing the quality of life that defines Maine. Our goals are community revitalization, conservation of farmland, forest and shoreland, and support for sustainable economic development that will benefit not just today’s Mainers but our children and grandchildren. As the ONLY statewide organization linking ALL these interrelated goals, GrowSmart Maine works with myriad other organizations and municipalities to convene discussion and take actions to revitalize our communities and economy while protecting our natural resources. https://growsmartmaine.org/
ROC USA is a non-profit organization with a national network of nine organizations such as CDI and a national financing source for resident-owned communities. ROC USA Network affiliates such as CDI have helped 238 communities preserve more than 15,500 homes in 16 states since 1984. www.rocusa.org
