It is when the residents of a manufactured home park band together and form a cooperative to buy the land that their homes sit on. An organization called Northcountry Cooperative Foundation (NCF) has helped some of the communities in Minnesota go through this process. Looking to build even more community sovereignty, NCF recently teamed up with the Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs) to reduce energy burden for residents. Huzzah!
Four CERTs regions (Metro, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest) were inspired by the work that NCF is doing and provided seed grants to the organization. These seed grants helped assess the energy efficiency of several manufactured home parks. NCF’s Executive Director Victoria “Tory” Clark, shares more.
“We set out to complete home energy assessments in four resident owned manufactured home communities in Minnesota. Along with CERTs, we worked in partnership with Slipstream, a national organization dedicated to discovering and testing climate solutions in buildings and communities. Together we accomplished site visits and assessments in three of the four regions, mapped manufactured home resources in all four regions, completed outreach and education of manufactured home weatherization opportunities, researched loan and grant options for manufactured home weatherization, and explored the possibility of solar applications in manufactured homes,” says Clark.
"Overall the project deepened the knowledge and understanding of the challenges faced in the manufactured home weatherization space. It also provided a road map of the necessary policy changes and programs that need to be created to ensure manufactured home weatherization is a resource that can scale statewide.”