This story was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
As mobile home owners fight rising housing costs, some of them have hit upon a solution that also helps in the fight against climate change: banding together and buying the land underneath their homes.
This model of collective ownership, also called resident-owned cooperatives or ROCs, is on the rise. The number of mobile homes attached to a resident-owned cooperative grew from just over 200 in 2000 to more than 15,000 in 2019, according to a 2022 study from researchers at Berkeley, Cornell, and MIT.
When residents own the land, they can move more quickly to upgrade infrastructure. That’s where climate change comes in. Renewables — especially solar — work uniquely well with these types of places, according to Kevin Jones, director at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law and Graduate School.
“There’s nothing more perfect than these resident-owned communities b... Read more
