Paul Bradley, president of ROC USA® and Deb Winiewicz, ROC Association Director for the New England Region and Member of Halifax Estates Co-op, talk the history of manufactured home communities, how MHCs and ROCs operate and the federal or state legislation that impacts ROCs on a recent episode of the Freddie Mac Multifamily podcast, “MHROCs with ROC USA.”
Listen to the 41-minute podcast here and read the transcript here. 
Bradley and Winiewicz do an excellent job of explaining why the ROC model is key to long-term housing stability and affordability in a volatile market. They also talk about opportunity to purchase legislation, the first ROC in New Hampshire and how ROC USA has grown to include nearly 22,000 homeowners in more than 300 ROCs in 21 states.
“If you can just imagine owning your home, but you don’t own the land that it sits on and at any time somebody can come along and buy that and you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Winiewicz said. “But once you become resident owned, you collectively own the land that your home sits on. So it’s a peace of mind. It’s security. It’s preserving that affordable community long term.”
Bradley also discusses a shift in mindset about manufactured housing losing value over time.
“People have an assumption about homes in communities, mobile homes as a depreciable asset. Well, that is ingrained in communities as well. And it’s a shift in the mindset to think about this as a homeownership asset and worthy of ongoing upkeep and investment because you can get something back out of it,” Bradley said. “We fundamentally believe that if we want to correct that situation, it starts with owning the land, control over the land for the reasons Deb cited, security and control.”