MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — When Lynda Hartless moved to Old Hellgate Village manufactured home park in 2006, she thought it was the perfect place to retire. Hartless could afford the rent on a single income and her lot has a view of the mountains.

“It’s so peaceful to sit out there and listen to the birds,” she said. “It’s the perfect place for me. … Then all the trailer parks started going away in town, which made me think, ’Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? Where would I move this? It was a scary thought.”

That’s why Hartless jumped on the option to form a cooperative with her neighbors to buy the park, located off Mullan Road west of Reserve Street.

“The security of having someplace that can’t be taken away from you, it’s very important for someone that’s older and retired,” she said.

As a resident-owned community (ROC), Old Hellgate Village is cooperatively owned and democratically run by residents. Instead of paying rent to a private landlord, they pay the cooperative.

NeighborWorks Montana worked with the community to help negotiate the purchase, set up the cooperative, elect the first board and review new bylaws and policies, said Adam Poeschl, the organization’s ROC acquisition specialist.

On Oct. 16, residents of the 34-home park officially became its owner after two years, during which the deal initially fell through and was revived.

Jessica Adams, the board’s interim president, said that while the first attempt to form the cooperative was hard on the neighborhood, the second effort was a quick success.

“What brought everybody together was the sense of let’s be a community and do this for ourselves,” she said. “Not just for me or someone else but for everybody.”

Old Hellgate Village received a $2.8 million loan from the state’s Coal Trust Multifamily Home Loan Program and a $300,000 loan from NeighborWorks Montana to cover the $2.5 million purchase and other project costs.

Typically the ROC USA financing arm is the default lender for these projects, but Old Hellgate Village and two other Missoula County ROCs received loans through the Montana Board of Housing program, Poeschl said. The funding helped make the purchase affordable, which helps keep the lot rents lower for residents, he said.

“It’s really a great opportunity for residents, especially working-class residents, to have some agency in their living situation because they and their neighbors get to cooperatively choose what kind of neighborhood that they want to have,” Poeschl said. “They’re not waiting on a private park owner to do those kinds of things like maintenance and upkeep. Ultimately, they get to set the lot rent and just pay bills. There’s no profit to be made, and any extra money after the bills are paid goes right back into the community.”

The cooperative raised rent slightly to pay for the loans and improvements to the property, but the rate remains comparable with rents for similar manufactured home parks, said Hartless, the board treasurer.

One of the cooperative’s biggest looming projects in the next few years is hooking up to the city’s sewer system, Hartless said. The change would alleviate concerns about the park’s aging septic and plumbing systems, she said. The manufactured home park was built in 1968.

Adams said the community is also discussing fixing the road and improving the water pumps to make their water less hard. Completing upgrades and sprucing up the park will solidify residents’ sense of pride and ownership, she said.

Hartless said she would love to see a pickleball court, and other residents suggested adding a playground and picnic shelter.

Both Adams and Hartless said serving on the board has been a learning experience and a chance for them to give back to the community.

“I just wanted to get it up and running and be part of the whole experience,” Hartless said. “I have learned so much by going through property conditions reports, seeing what’s what with this park.”

Adams said that while the process involved a lot of paperwork, it went smoothly, and it was nice to “be part of the hands that got us there.”

“I’m really proud of everybody in the park,” she said. “I’m proud of each and every single one of us and the part they played to get this done. We couldn’t do it without them.”

Hartless said she likes that she’s gotten to know her neighbors better.

“It’s nice to see people step up and help each other,” she said. “I look for a bright future, one where the community gets together. I’m just looking forward to that.”

NeighborWorks Montana will work with the Old Hellgate Village cooperative for 10 years to help ensure it’s running well and abiding by loan covenants, Poeschl said. The cooperative paid NeighborWorks 4% of the sale price for pre-purchase technical assistance and will annually pay a fixed amount for the 10-year contract, he said.

Poeschl said NeighborWorks Montana is excited for residents to take ownership of their community after a longer-than-usual process.

“They did a good job of keeping the community spirit alive in making this resident purchase happen,” he said. “I’m excited to see how they carry that community spirit forward in the changes they want to make in their neighborhood.”

Old Hellgate Village is Montana’s 22nd resident-owned community and joins four others in Missoula County, according to NeighborWorks. Poeschl said the organization is establishing new resident-owned communities in Montana at a “pretty steady clip.”

While the program only has so much capacity, park owners often reach out after hearing about the option from each other or through the news, Poeschl said. For the owner, selling to residents is like any other real estate transaction, he said. The organization tries to keep to a 120-day timeline and pays the fair market value for a community, so feedback is usually positive, Poeschl said.

“The seller gets their investment back, and they also get to know they helped preserve their community in perpetuity as manufactured housing and help the residents preserve the community they love to live in,” he said.

NeighborWorks has seen increased interest in resident-owned communities from mobile home park residents and local governments looking to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing, Poeschl said. The organization is looking into converting two other communities in the Missoula area in the next year, he said.

Adams and Hartless encouraged residents of other mobile home parks to contact NeighborWorks Montana to learn more about becoming a cooperative. The protection from sale and development is worth the rent increase the cooperative had to make, Hartless said.

“I encourage people to work through the process, contact other ROCs to share their information, knowledge and experiences,” she said. “And don’t give up.”

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This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.