Residents Purchase Hiawatha Cooperative, Preserving Affordable Homeownership and Create Room to Grow

On Sept. 9, residents of Hiawatha Cooperative in Wabasha, MN purchased their 33-unit manufactured home community, safeguarding the affordability of the neighborhood and putting the future of the property in the hands of the people who live there. 

With support from CoNorth, residents formed a cooperative to purchase the community for a total development cost of $2.2 million. Hiawatha has space for nine additional homes, creating the potential to expand the community and provide more Wabasha-area families with an affordable path to homeownership.

As a resident-owned community, Hiawatha’s homeowners now collectively own the land beneath their homes and have a voice and vote in decisions that affect their neighborhood. Residents elect their own board of directors, approve the annual operating budget, and make decisions about community priorities and long-term investments.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Hiawatha Cooperative into the growing network of resident-owned communities in Minnesota,” says CoNorth Executive Director Tory Clark-West. “We’re also excited to demonstrate the impact of PRICE funding through this acquisition and show how, with a relatively modest upfront public investment, we can preserve an entire community as affordable, resident-owned housing for the long term.”

Financing that puts residents first

The approximately $2.2 million project was made possible through a combination of mission-driven financing and public investment.

The CoNorth Loan Fund, CoNorth’s subsidiary Community Development Financial Institution, provided $1.633 million in financing to support the residents’ purchase of the community. However, an additional $500,000 awarded through the federal Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement (PRICE) program was a key factor in financing the purchase and ensuring that the community remains affordable for Cooperative residents.

Minnesota Housing Partnership (MHP) administers the PRICE funding and played an important role in making the purchase possible. PRICE funding is designed to preserve and revitalize manufactured housing and manufactured home communities while supporting long-term housing affordability.

The combination of flexible financing and grant funding helped make resident ownership possible for Hiawatha while reducing the amount of acquisition costs that must ultimately be supported by residents.

Residents take the lead

For the families who live at Hiawatha, becoming a cooperative means having a greater voice in the decisions that shape their community and more control over its future. Sixty-four percent of Hiawatha Cooperative residents have incomes at or below 60% of the area median income, and 40% report living with a disability. Nearly half of residents are age 62 or older, and residents have lived in the community for an average of 11 years.

Now, after years of calling Hiawatha home, residents are also its owners. With ownership comes the opportunity to reinvest in the community, address long-needed repairs and make decisions together about what Hiawatha will look like in the years ahead.

“CoNorth took us through the whole process while also leaving the decisions about how we wanted our park to be up to us,” said Hiawatha Cooperative Board Member Pam Larson. “It was hectic at first because it moves really fast, but now we feel great that we own our park! With the rent now going to us, we will finally be able to start getting some of the needed repairs done.”