Madelia and Mankato mobile home parks among grant recipients
Dec. 16—MANKATO — A mobile home park in Mankato will get improved roads, a Madelia park will get a new storm shelter and affordable single-family homes in Mankato will be built, thanks to grants awarded by Minnesota Housing.
The state agency approved tens of millions of dollars in grants to projects around the state at its meeting Thursday.
The biggest local winner of grants was Walnut Towers, the downtown Mankato high-rise that will get about $20 million to renovate the 86-unit complex that serves low-income residents. (The Free Press reported on that project in Monday's edition. See "Walnut Towers on verge of major renovation," tinyurl.com/245acy4v).
The High Ciara mobile home park in Mankato will get $196,000 to replace deteriorating roads to improve safety by removing potholes and placing speed bumps on streets.
Mobile Village in Madelia is getting $500,000 to build a storm shelter after the building it was using for one is no longer available.
The Partnership Community Land Trust, part of Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership, was awarded $271,500. The money will go toward building new four-bedroom homes in Mankato to serve low-income families.
Madelia
Madelia Mobile Village is a resident-owned cooperative, formed in 2008. The village has 30 occupied lots with 22 more available.
The city of Madelia had allowed residents of the village to use the basement of the nearby fire hall as a storm shelter. But the city recently built a new fire hall/city offices building downtown and is selling the old fire hall for private redevelopment.
The new $500,000 shelter will be an ADA-compliant above-ground storm shelter with hardened construction. It will also be used as a community room.
The village had applied for $1.6 million, with the remaining funds to be used to build an outdoor park, playground and basketball court.
In awarding only funds to build the shelter, Minnesota Housing staff said: "Though it would be nice for the community to have such a great outdoor space, staff recommend a smaller budget for a storm shelter that could still double as a community space, due to limited funds and the high number of requests."
The lots at Madelia Mobile Village are affordable to low-income households with rents at $260 per month (plus water). Household income ranges of residents are reported as $14,800-$39,400. Seventy-eight percent of the households in the village are Latino, many being first-generation immigrants and Spanish-speaking households.
The funds and oversight of the construction of the storm shelter will be handled by North Country Foundation, a St. Paul-based nonprofit that helps residents purchase their mobile home parks and set up cooperatives to run them.
Victoria Clark-West, of the foundation, said they helped the residents purchase Madelia Village in 2008 and have an ongoing relationship with them.
She said the funds awarded by Minnesota Housing come from a relatively new state fund that aims to build storm shelters at mobile home parks.
"Minnesota is one of the only states that has a law that requires storm shelters in mobile home parks. So it's really exciting there are state grant funds available to help these cooperatives that provide very affordable housing to meet vital health and safety standards that we want to see for any community," Clark-West said.
She said they are working with Madelia Mobile Village to try to secure other grants to build the park and other outdoor amenities at the mobile home park.
High Ciara
The owner of the mobile home park, located at 1025 Belle Ave., behind the Kwik Trip and Wendy's on Madison Avenue, purchased the park in 2018 and has been slowly making improvements since.
The park received the full $196,200 it requested, with Minnesota Housing staff noting the price was relatively low for a street project. The park owners are contributing 10% to the cost of the project.
Their community of 81 lots has a high percentage of tenants on Social Security and also houses young families.
Lot rents are $310 per month and include trash services. The application describes the average resident household income as $27,300. Census data shows 24% of households in the park represent underserved communities, primarily Hispanic, while the Hispanic population in Mankato in general is about 4%.
Mankato
The Partnership Community Land Trust is awarded $271,500 to go toward construction of new four-bedroom homes in Mankato. The trust had requested $452,500.
The trust is part of Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership and its mission is to partner with communities to develop places for people to call home.
The trust is an established and separate nonprofit entity that works solely on community land trust affordable housing projects.
The Housing Partnership said the work by the trust will help in the partnership's goal of expanding its programs in Mankato. The partnership and trust are already active in Willmar and Worthington.
The Housing Partnership said it plans to dedicate staff to work with the trust to inspect properties, prepare designs and scopes of work, manage construction, acquire existing homes, facilitate new homebuyer purchasing and handle all administrative duties on projects in Mankato.
The Housing Partnership has built nine new single-family homes in the past five years in southern Minnesota and has two more units started in August of this year.
The homes to be built in Mankato are aimed at households at or below 60% of the area median income.
In awarding the funds, Minnesota Housing noted that the four-bedroom homes proposed for Mankato allow for larger families and multigenerational living.
Construction costs per house are about $302,000, below the industry average of $332,287 for a unit of similar new construction in a similar geographic area. That amount does not reflect the cost of land.