Homes in manufactured home communities offer an affordable ownership option. credit: joshuaraineyphotography.com (iStock)

Manufactured home communities, or MHCs, number close to a thousand across the province, consisting of tens of thousands of manufactured home sites. Many are oriented specifically for seniors, a demographic in which limited, lower incomes are common. Compared to many other forms of housing, homes in MHCs typically cost much less, and provide yards, the opportunity to customize, and a potential social community.

How does ownership work with a manufactured home? “[It] involves of a unique blend of the ownership of property coupled with a lease of real property. The MHC resident ordinarily leases the home site, from an MHC landowner pursuant to a tenancy agreement, and has no ownership interest in the underlying land. Usually, the tenancy is month to month, though the resident enjoys a considerable degree of security nonetheless because the tenancy can only be terminated for cause,” explains author Michael Drouillard, a real estate lawyer. “The resident owns the manufactured home that he or she relocates onto the site.”

But despite their homes being governed by the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act, which covers tenancy agreements, and the Manufactured Home Act, which records the ownership of manufactured homes, MHC residents are facing two specific affordability challenges: lease rate increases and resident evictions.

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Both of these challenges relate to increasing property values. Drouillard discusses the topic in depth in “Affordability Challenges in Manufactured Home Communities,” in the Summer 2016 issue of Input, page 22.

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