With $750,000 in state funding and financing from ROC USA, the residents of Royal Oaks Cooperative in Bath, Pa., secure ownership of their 33-home community for $2.95M
BATH, Pa. – With the sun setting through a window, a blazing orange hue peeking through the oak trees behind them, the steering committee of Royal Oaks Cooperative sat together, sharing a pizza and stories about becoming a resident owned community and what it means to own the land beneath their homes.
On Thursday, they purchased their 33-home community for $2.95 million with funding from ROC USA Capital and $750,000 that ROC USA secured through Pennsylvania’s Hosing Finance Agency’s (PHARE) Program. The community also financed an additional $145,000 to be used on deferred maintenance infrastructure repairs, including replacing drain fields, tank repairs, sealing roadways, driveway repairs and installing new road signage.
“ROC USA Capital is very pleased to have closed acquisition financing to enable the homeowners at Royal Oaks to secure long-term ownership of the land beneath their homes and the financial security that comes with that ownership,” said Michael Sloss, managing director of ROC USA Capital. “ROC USA Capital looks forward to working closely with the homeowners at Royal Oaks to sustain and improve their community over at least the next 10 years.”
ROC USA President Emily Thaden said government funding that supports resident ownership, like Pennsylvania’s PHARE Program, highlights the growing recognition of resident ownership as a proven, sustainable solution to the nation’s affordable housing crisis. By supporting cooperative ownership, these programs help preserve long-term housing stability for homeowners, offering an alternative to the rising rents and uncertainty often faced in investor-owned manufactured home communities.
“Programs like PHARE are critical in empowering homeowners in communities like Royal Oaks to achieve resident ownership,” Thaden said. “Pennsylvania’s taken this smart approach to preserve existing affordable neighborhoods, one that more states should adopt to strengthen communities across the country.”
Jed Kahler’s home is the preferred meeting place for the group. He lives on Black Oak Lane (each street in Royal Oaks Cooperative is named after the trees that fill the community – Black Oak, White Oak, Red Oak and Royal Oak). They jokingly call his home “Jed’s Cookie Shed,” because he loves to bake. Pecan pie and chocolate peanut butter pie are two of his specialties. But Kahler is a man of many talents. A divorcee, he is also a retired dairy farmer and the “fixer” of the group. If you need your bike tires filled with air, help switching out a fuse or need info on hiring a lawyer, he’s your guy.
“I have a lot of common sense and have always worked well with neighbors. I’m a wealth of information and I work hard. We all are,” he said, pointing to the group beside him.
I love it here and want to stay here.
Kelly Kuznicki
Royal Oaks Cooperative
While united in the goal of resident ownership, the group is unique and brings special skills to the community, said Jeanee Wright, Cooperative Project Coordinator, Special Projects, at ROC USA, who served as the Project Manager for the community purchase.
“This group of leaders really spent countless hours working to understand – and to help their neighbors understand – and it’s a true measure of the success of hard teamwork,” she said. “They are all realists. Everything about them was very forthcoming, and I think that’s what brought their community together. It was great to witness.”
Royal Oaks Cooperative sits in Bath, a small borough nestled between Allentown and the Poconos. It’s part of the Lehigh Valley, with beautiful rolling hills, bucolic scenery, the Monocacy River nearby and lots of hiking trails and parks and quick access to Philadelphia and New York City. The schools are highly rated, and it’s a safe area to raise kids. Royal Oaks is adjacent to a golf course where homes in the area are priced between $750,000 and $1 million and a two-bedroom apartment rents for between $1,600 and $2,300.
Kelly Kuznicki moved to Bath from Long Island in 2020. She and her husband have two children, a 7-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son. They didn’t live in Royal Oaks immediately when they moved to the area but knew they wanted to stay in Bath after their daughter completed and loved kindergarten at a local school. When Kelly found Royal Oaks, she couldn’t wait to move in. She loved the affordability and safety of the community and the outdoor space for her kids to play. When ROC USA expressed an interest in helping the homeowners achieve resident ownership, she was skeptical at first but started researching ROC USA, listening to the Ownership Matters podcasts while working in the mailroom at her job.
“I think there was a lot of skepticism at first but when I listened to all of those podcasts and I heard people talk about the success, I told everyone that this was the real deal,” she said. “I love it here and want to stay here. Our home sits back on the street from everyone. My kids have a huge yard in the front and rear of their home to play in. There are beautiful trees and my husband works nights and I’m home alone with my kids and anywhere else I would be nervous but not here. We all look out for each other here.” Her mom also recently moved from New York to Royal Oaks and Kuznicki can see her home from her window.
The stories of human connection and community fill Jed’s Cookie Shed like the warm smell of a freshly baked pecan pie. They laugh and wipe away tears of joy as they celebrate a future of cooperative ownership. They talk about resident Maybel Smith, 86, who recently lost her twin sister, Isabel “Izzy” Smith, after she suffered a massive stroke in September. Maybel lives on White Oak Lane and plays the ukulele, and her sister lived on Royal Oak Lane and played the guitar. The community rallied around Maybel, offering her support and compassion as she navigated the grief of losing her sister.
About 70 percent of the community are retirees but there’s a good mix of young families and people from other parts of the country who moved to Bath for the quaintness of a small town with quick access to big cities. Kelly jokes, “We are surrounded by fields and trees but 10 minutes up the road and you are at Target. It’s the best of both worlds.”
Christine Hernandez moved to Royal Oaks from southern California three years ago with her daughter.
“The community is beautiful,” she said. “My daughter loves it here. I came from tumbleweeds and desert and here it’s colorful and beautiful and calm. I was a single parent when I moved here, and I had to find somewhere that was safe. It was like $1,200 to rent a two-bedroom apartment, and it was not in a good neighborhood. In an apartment, you don’t get parking or a yard. Here I have two parking spots, a yard, my daughter can safely ride her bike, and I even feel safe with the school bus dropping her off at the entrance of the community and her walking home.”
Bruce Powers and his wife moved to Royal Oaks two years ago in December, downsizing from a three-story home in nearby Hazleton because of health issues and a need to be closer to hospitals and family in Bath. He remembers feeling welcome from the moment he emptied the moving van.
“The day we moved in was during the coldest December in the Lehigh Valley,” he said. “I actually had a neighbor come and help us move in and it was so cold. I thought about how kind that woman was to help us that day, and she has since helped me blow leaves off my yard. That’s just how people are here. If someone needs help, they offer to help.”
Joe Hafner and his wife have lived at Royal Oaks for 15 years and knew that when they got a notice on his door in June from ROC USA to help the residents purchase, it was something they all had to do.
“I thought this is our last chance,” he said. “You feel helpless and hopeless when you’re under the control of an investor and ROC USA came along and gave us some hope.”
When he and his wife first moved into the community, they paid $400 for rent. It increased over the years and with the resident purchase will increase to $894, but moving forward, the homeowners will now have a vote on rent increases. In ROCs, annual site fees (often called rent or lot rent) increase an average of 0.9 percent while in commercially owned communities, annual site fee increases average 7.1 percent, according to data from the May/June 2024 issue of MH Insider Magazine.
“One of my missions is to try and find a way to get this mortgage and the rent down,” said Hafner. “I think with all of us coming together and growing into a community who can work together, we will be able to do it. We have a responsibility as a steering committee, a Board and to ourselves to make this cooperative work and to have a positive influence on the lives of all the people here.”