ROC USA® President Paul Bradley appeared on Sunday’s edition of “NBC Nightly News,” marking the latest in a string of national media appearances in recent months.
The piece focused on seniors who choose to downsize in their retirement to manufactured home communities, a trend that gives homeowners a low-maintenance home in a tight-knit neighborhood.
The story focused on a California couple and stressed many of the benefits of manufactured home community living, but also cautioned viewers to be sure to shop around. Bradley reinforced that point.
“You want to find a community that is not a risk of redevelopment and you want to find a community where rents are affordable,” he said.
Click here to view the entire NBC report.
In March, ROC USA was mentioned in a Time magazine article called “The Home of the Future.” In that piece, reporter Karl Vick visited three non-ROC USA affiliated resident-owned communities in Zephyrhills, about 30 miles northeast of Tampa.
In December, NPR reporter Daniel Zwerdling focused on Park Plaza Cooperative, a ROC in suburban Minneapolis. He interviewed Board President (and ROC Association Director) Natividad Seefeld about the work she and her neighbors have done at Park Plaza and her goals for the future.
Seefeld spoke of her life-threatening cancer diagnosis and her dream of building a playground for neighborhood children. It sparked the Fund a Community Project effort under way at rocusa.org that allows people to give directly to the playground project, with 100 percent of tax-deductible donations going straight to Park Plaza’s effort.
Bradley said the recent media coverage is not only great for ROC USA and its affiliates across the country, but for the entire manufactured housing sector.
“These stories have focused on positive developments in and perceptions of manufactured housing,” he said. “Whether that’s in resident-owned communities or not, we all benefit from coverage that combats the stigma too-often associated with these homes and worse, the hard-working people who live in them.”