WESTFIELD – Representatives from CDI (Cooperative Development Institute) and residents of both the Heritage and Arbor mobile home parks met again at the Westfield Athenaeum on Tuesday night. The latest meeting was a follow up to a meeting last week.
CDI provides technical assistance and financing to residents of manufactured home parks in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Maine, and Rhode Island, and has been working with the residents of the Westfield mobile home parks as the current landowner of their mobile home parks, James Buratti of LME LLC, has signed an agreement to sell both parks. The sale agreement also includes selling a third park, Lincoln Mobile Home Estates, located in Lincoln, Rhode Island.
Andrew Danforth, Director of the NEROC Program for CDI, told the people in attendance that CDI would be able to allow the residents to buy their own mobile home park in order to avoid both of the parks being sold.
The Heritage Mobile Home Park is located at 868 Southampton Rd. (Photo by Greg Fitzpatrick)
On September 19, Buratti’s attorney sent a letter to all residents of the Lincoln mobile home park to inform them of his signed sale agreement. However, residents of Heritage and Arbor say that they still haven’t received a letter from Buratti.
Danforth added that due to Massachusetts General Law, Ch. 140, Sec. 32-R and the Manufactured Housing Law, residents have the right of first refusal. In the law it states, “If your community owner/operator intends to sell or lease all or part of your community, he or she must notify all residents in the community. He or she must send the notice by certified mail within 14 days after he or she has advertised, listed, or otherwise publicized that the community is for sale. No sale or lease can occur until at least 45 days after you and other residents have been notified. In the notice, he or she must notify residents of their right to purchase the community under the Act.”
Since Massachusetts residents have the right of first refusal under this type of situation, CDI says that they’re simply an organization that informs the mobile home parks of the sale, their rights, and what they can do to avoid the sale.
“We think of ourselves as an informational service, we’re informing them of their rights,” said Danforth. “The residents have the legislative right to match the terms of the sales agreement.”
The process of the residents owning their own mobile home park would work by having all three mobile home parks enter into a cooperative. Each homeowner would have to pay $100 up front in order to be in the cooperative. From there, each mobile home would have a monthly rent they would have to pay, on a 30-year plan to pay the loan.
The Arbor Mobile Home Park is located at 68 Klondike Ave. (Photo by Greg Fitzpatrick)
Currently, residents of Heritage pay $320, Arbor pays $335, and Lincoln pays over $400 monthly. However, Danforth noted that if the cooperative went through, CDI would go over each mobile home park’s finances and expenses in order to come up with a certain number that homeowners would have to pay monthly.
In order for people that live in the mobile home parks to enter into this cooperative, 51% of the people living in each of the mobile home parks would have to agree to join the co-op with CDI. At this time, Heritage has 78 home sites, while Arbor has 58, and Lincoln has 63. Lincoln Mobile Home Estates has already received 51% approval from their residents and are entering into the cooperative. However, if there isn’t 51% in favor of the idea, the manufactured communities would go back to being sold.
In the effort to get the 51% approval, residents will have a petition to give their neighbors to sign.
If the cooperative goes through, residents of each of the three parks would elect residents to be officers on the Board of Directors. This would allow them to govern their mobile home parks to their preference and have specific committees to take care of different issues.
At the meeting on Tuesday evening, three residents from both Heritage and Arbors signed up as officers.
Danforth noted that both parks will consult with an attorney CDI works with and will send out a certified letter to Buratti’s attorney, to inform them that the residents haven’t received a notice of sale. If Buratti’s attorney does get back to the residents with the notice of sale, both parks will have 45 days to prove that 51% of both Heritage and Arbors are in favor of moving forward with the cooperative.
CDI will be holding another meeting with the residents of Heritage and Arbors on Tuesday October 23 at 6:30 in the Westfield Athenaeum.
