Preview:
PORTLAND, Ore. — When Gadiel Galvez learned that the owner of his mobile home park south of Seattle was looking to sell, he and other residents worried their largely Latino community would be bulldozed to make way for another Amazon warehouse.
So, they decided to form a cooperative and buy their park in Lakewood, Washington. With help from a nonprofit that advises communities like theirs and helps them secure loans, they bought it for $5.25 million in September.
"Everybody thought, 'You know what? … I'm going to make this place the best that I can,'" said Galvez, 22, who is a co-op board member. "Some people painted their homes, some...
Our thoughts on this story:
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These articles remind me of someone hawking a timeshare. The numbers don’t compute but the salespeople try to use your ego as a tool to make you make a clearly stupid decision sometimes. Just read these two quotes from the article:
- "Just to have that peace of mind, to know that our rent is going to be locked in for awhile and not keep going up, and also knowing that our rent monies … are going back into the property, that is the cool part," she said.
- The required rent increase to go co-op was even steeper in Evergreen Village Cooperative in Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania, — from $460 a month to $750 to pay off the $12 million loan.
When the residents buy their own property, what do they get? A big debt burden and higher lot rent most of the time. And what they lose is professional management that actually collects rents and doesn’t play favorites. Not a great trade.