Tag: Zero Waste

How mobile home co-ops provide housing security — and climate resilience

Jan

2024

This story was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

As mobile home owners fight rising housing costs, some of them have hit upon a solution that also helps in the fight against climate change — by banding together and buying the land underneath their homes.

This model of collective ownership, also called resident-owned cooperatives or ROCs, is on the rise. In 2000, there were little more than 200. Today, there are more than 15,000, according to a 2022 study from researchers at the University of California Berkeley, Cornell and MIT.

When residents own the land, they can move more quickly to upgrade infrastructure. That’s where climate change comes in. Renewables — especially solar — work uniquely well with these types of places, according to Kevin Jones, director at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law and Graduate School.

“There’s nothing more perfect than these resident-owned communities because they already have a cooperative structure and, generally, commonly own the piece of land,” said Jones. “[They] are just kind of natural communities to be able to bring the benefits of solar to more low to moderate-income people.”

Mobile home parks — often a misnomer because many homes are anchored to the ground — house more than 22 million Americans and provide a vital form of housing amidst a nationwide housing crisis.

Often, private landlords will delay vital upgrades but continue to collect lot rents, which pay not for the actual property which the resident could rent or own but for the land underneath it. This can result in a system where many owners invest thousands of dollars into paying off their home, but are still beholden to the park owner for lot rents and other fees.

The problem of displacement has been exacerbated in the past decades by private equity’s foray into mobile home park ownership, which often leads to higher increases for rent, utilities, and other fees while conditions either stay mostly the same or worsen.

Nonprofit organizations like ROCUSA have been essential to providing communities with resources such as low or interest-free loans, grants, and the essential planning knowledge needed to create a co-op.

The organization does more than help individual co-ops, it also helps connect people in a vast network of co-ops so they can share resources and knowledge. This process can help immensely when considering for example, the prolonged process of acquiring a permit for a solar array or which contractors to use to install heat pumps in residences.

Ronald Palmer knows all about the process of installing solar in a co-op. As board president for Lakeville Village in Geneseo, New York, he helped his community navigate the lengthy process. It was one of the first solar projects in the upstate town of Geneseo, with a population around 7,000 people.

That community, which comprises 50 homes for people 55 and older, has had a solar array for just over two years now. The benefits from it don’t just help Lakeville Village residents, but also local businesses and other sites.

A large majority of these co-ops are concentrated in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest. One of the reasons for the high number of them in states like New Hampshire is access to state-specific resources, according to Jones.

“The Northeast, you know, clearly is an area where there’s a lot of interest in solar,” said Jones. “We don’t necessarily have the best solar resource in the country, but we have generally good public policies toward solar.”

This allows communities in those areas, including people who live in resident-owned mobile home co-ops to access the resources needed to set up solar.

In New Hampshire, ROC-NH helps connect co-ops with state resources and helps prioritize the needs of co-op members. These needs are usually related to financial stability, according to Sarah Marchant, Vice President of ROC-NH.

“Our goal when talking about community solar, with residential communities, is not just to reduce their carbon footprint,” said Marchant. “But the way this works is it has to reduce their costs and has to reduce their bills as well.”

This is vital for communities where members might be working two or three different jobs just to stay afloat, according to Marchant.

While the process of forming a co-op and investing in climate-friendly projects is time-consuming, there are many benefits.

In South Texas, a resident-owned cooperative called Pasadena Trails, located just outside of Houston, found a solution to chronic flooding. The predominantly Latino community installed drainage systems, which helped significantly when Hurricane Harvey hit and drenched the Houston-area in 60 inches of rain. In the wake of Harvey, Pasadena Trails fared better in comparison to neighboring areas.

Back in New York state, the residents of Lakeville Village are pleased with their solar project, which reflects the values of the older residents, most of whom are grandparents. For them, this solar project was their way of taking care of their own and ensuring a small step in the right direction for future generations.

”We want to reduce our carbon footprint, and one of our concerns was for our grandchildren and their children,” said Jones. “And we saw this as a way of contributing to that and being responsible grandparents.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How mobile home co-ops provide housing security — and climate resilience on Jan 2, 2024.

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A change in tax law has some solar providers walking on sunshine

Jan

2024

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with WABE and Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

The neighborhood near Savannah, Georgia, where rooftop solar installers Nicole Lee and Seth Gunning met up one fall afternoon was “ideal” for solar panels, they agreed. The houses were relatively new, and the one they were eyeing had a clear expanse of roof in perfect condition.

“This is an amazing candidate for solar because it is solar ready,” said Lee, the owner of Be Smart Home Solutions. “We know they have the newer upgraded electrical system. Plenty of sun because it is a newer neighborhood, so there are no mature trees.”

Lee and Gunning weren’t there to sell solar panels; they were evaluating the house for the new Georgia BRIGHT solar leasing program, funded by the national nonprofit Capital Good Fund. Available to households earning less than $100,000 annually, the program aims to reduce energy bills by making solar power affordable. This house, Gunning said, could expect a savings of about $400 a year.

Savings like that, along with other benefits of solar energy like avoiding fossil fuel emissions and relying less on the power grid, remain out of reach for many people in that income bracket because of the high upfront cost. While the median income of solar adopters has dropped from $140,000 in 2010 to $117,000 in 2022, their incomes still skew higher than most.

Buying solar panels and having them installed typically costs tens of thousands of dollars. While there’s a substantial federal tax credit to mitigate that cost, for individual households it can only offset a tax liability — if you don’t owe very much on your taxes, or you typically get a tax refund, you can’t benefit from the credit.

But a recent law could change that. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, nonprofits like Capital Good Fund can now claim the tax credit as a direct refund, then pass those savings on to the customers who sign on to the Georgia BRIGHT program. It’s especially important to provide solar for the moderate-income households the program is seeking, organizers said, because those families often have to spend a greater share of their income on energy.

“This program levels the playing field for those families who are facing those energy burdens to help them reduce their energy costs,” said Lee.

While solar leasing isn’t new, in the past it’s been offered mostly by for-profit companies. The change in tax law, however, has opened the field to nonprofits, who can often charge less, said Capital Good Fund founder and CEO Andy Posner.

“So if it’s a $10,000 system, and we’re gonna get a $3,000 refund check from the IRS, it costs us less to purchase the system,” he said. “Also because we don’t have the same requirements for return on investment as a for-profit.”

Capital Good Fund’s Georgia BRIGHT program is in its pilot phase, aiming to add solar to around 200 roofs in the next few months. But the goal, Posner said, is to go nationwide.

“This pilot is about impacting 200 lives, but it’s also about creating a model for serving 200,000 over the next 10 years,” he said. “Both within Georgia and in other states, there’s a tremendous interest.”

The initiative has already expanded to include churches and smaller nonprofits in Georgia, and Posner said the organization is in “various stages of conversation” with about 10 other states interested in a similar leasing program.

And more money is coming: In June, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it will dole out $7 billion in IRA funds to states, tribal governments, nonprofits, and others for programs that enable “low-income households to access affordable, resilient, and clean solar energy.” Grantees will be selected next spring.

“It’s going to enable a real scale-up of these programs, in Georgia and beyond,” Posner said of the grant funding.

For Savannah homeowner David Morgan, the pilot project in Georgia was a good fit. He bought his 1955 house a couple of years ago, and he’s been looking to install solar. Morgan works in disaster recovery, earning $65,000, so he said he sees a lot of places dealing with extended power outages and wants to be less reliant on the grid. He also pays a steep $270 a month for electricity.

“I’ll be into the solar panel program for $98 a month,” he said of his Georgia BRIGHT solar panels. “And I should be using between $60 and $70 a month from Georgia Power.”

In other words, once the solar is installed early next year, Morgan can expect a savings of about $100 a month. He said he’ll put that money toward retirement.

“Every little bit helps towards trying not to work when I’m old,” he said.

Morgan has opted for a system with battery storage, so he’ll have backup power when the sun isn’t shining, or when there’s an outage on the grid. And he said he’s also glad he’ll be doing his part to fight climate change.

He hopes more people will get on board with renewable energy. “This is one of those programs that anybody can actually get involved in,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A change in tax law has some solar providers walking on sunshine on Jan 2, 2024.