March 11, 2026
Program-related investment and grant funding will help scale the development of affordable, factory-built housing across Minnesota
CoNorth has received a Community Innovation award from the Bush Foundation to increase the supply of durable, affordable homes across Minnesota through new programs and services that build on the organization’s work supporting resident-owned manufactured home communities.
The $3.4 million award includes $2 million in program-related investments (PRIs) and $1.43 million in capacity building support. The award will be disbursed over the next four years.
“This is a catalytic investment for CoNorth and the resident-owned manufactured home cooperatives we serve,” said Victoria Clark-West, Executive Director at CoNorth. “It allows us to build a critical new piece of programmatic infrastructure for our partner cooperatives — the ability to bring in new manufactured homes and maintain housing inventory that fills vacant lots. That’s essential to strengthening the financial resilience of resident-owned manufactured home communities while expanding access to entry-level homeownership in places where affordable ownership opportunities are increasingly scarce. The Bush Foundation’s support comes at the perfect moment as we grow our programs and scale this work across the region.”
The PRI will provide working capital for CoNorth to purchase and sell new manufactured homes through its homeownership program, CoNorth Homes, which works directly with resident-owned communities and manages the home site preparation, installation, and sales process.
The capacity building support will help grow the CoNorth Homes program and also provides critical investment as the organization develops new ways of creating resident-owned manufactured home communities through redevelopment and new construction.
“The homes we’re bringing into resident-owned communities are high-quality, energy-efficient, and cost dramatically less to build because they’re produced in a factory environment,” said Clark-West. “That efficiency translates directly into affordability — in most communities, the total monthly cost to own one of these homes is less than what it costs to rent a similar-sized apartment. This is the entry-level homeownership option that communities urgently need right now.”
An Innovative Model for Permanently Affordable Housing
CoNorth’s model stands out by pairing resident ownership with a long-term strategy for housing development—preserving existing communities while creating new opportunities for stable, permanently affordable housing.
“Through our Community Innovation program, we look for ideas to develop, test and spread, and the work of CoNorth is a great example,” said Rudy Guglielmo, grantmaking officer at the Bush Foundation. “Their model of cooperative ownership for manufactured home communities is expanding what affordable housing can look like and helping people build wealth through cooperative ownership of the land.”
The Bush Foundation’s Community Innovation program invests in bold ideas and the leaders who power them across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the 23 Native nations that share the same geography.
CoNorth has been working preserve and expand affordable manufactured home since 1999. They are affiliated with 18 cooperative communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. To learn more about cooperative housing and the work of CoNorth, visit www.conorth.coop.
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