When Lesa Mackin, her husband and their baby were living in her mother’s attic in 1994, the family spent hours wondering whether they would ever be able to purchase a home of their own.
Unable to come up with down payment money for a home, Mackin said, she had pretty much accepted the fact that they would have to become renters for the rest of their lives.
“One day, I heard about this program where people were refurbishing old mobile homes and giving them to people who couldn’t afford to buy a home,” said Mackin.
“I never, ever dreamed it would happen to me.”
In February 1995, Mackin remembers, she stood on a snowy hill in rural Tomahawk, Wis., with her son, Evan, in her arms, watching as her new home was hauled through the deep snow.
This winter, Mackin put a new bird feeder outside the kitchen window. Every time she sits with Evan in their own home to watch the feeding birds, she said, she’s grateful for what she has.
The program that has helped Mackin and about 85 other Wisconsin families become homeowners is a unique partnership between several public and private entities.
Called “Our Home,” the program started as a simple idea in 1994 when Ross Kinzler of the Wisconsin Manufactured Housing Association and Jim Reitzner, vice president and general manager of Steenberg Homes based in Fond du Lac, were talking about the ever-increasing burden of getting rid of older manufactured homes.
Kinzler said the 125 dealers who sell manufactured homes throughout Wisconsin each had at least three older homes sitting on their lots.
With landfill restrictions increasing and the cost of renovating the homes or moving them so high, disposal of the homes has been a problem for years.
“Our first idea was to try and recycle the older homes, but the cost was prohibitive,” Kinzler said. “Then Jim suggested fixing them up for families if we could get the labor and materials donated.”
When Char Thompson of the Foundation for Rural Housing heard about the idea, she immediately knew she could help. The foundation is a statewide non-profit organization that helps low-income families in rural areas.
“Back in 1994, I wrote a grant for the federal government that gave us the money for materials to renovate the first 31 homes,” said Thompson. “Right from the start, I knew this was a terrific idea.”
The labor for renovating the homes came from three state prisons–the Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution near Plymouth, Black River Correctional Center near Black River Falls, and the Gordon Correctional Center near Superior.
Prisoners at those institutions are trained in everything from woodworking and plumbing to electrical work and carpet-laying. Then they gut and rebuild the mobile homes, making them livable once more.
“This is a totally win-win program for everyone,” said Jim Cosgrove, education director at the Kettle Moraine facility. “The prisoners are using their skills to help someone, the mobile homes are getting recycled, and a family gets a home.”
Joe Vagueiro, building services teacher at Kettle Moraine, said the mobile homes give his men a chance to hone their new work skills before they leave prison.
“These men are leaving with skills that can help them get jobs when they leave, and they really feel good about helping out the families who get the mobile homes,” he said.
When the mobile homes come into the prison, many of them are barely standing on their frames, he said. When they leave, said Vagueiro, they look like new.
“As part of our signature on the homes, we always put in a nice bow window in the front,” he said. “Many of these homes were built in the 1960s and they are in rough shape.”
Thompson said that since funding from the federal government ended a couple years ago, it has been more difficult to keep the mobile home project going. But she said manufacturers and dealers had been helping to move the mobile homes and were paying transportation costs.
Some families already own land, she said, and those who don’t are helped to purchase a spot for their new homes.
“Our average client earns about $4,000 (per adult) a year,” said Thompson. “Many banks won’t loan them even $5,000 to buy a piece of land and to move the mobile homes, so it’s often difficult.”
Families who qualify for the program are charged about $5,000 for the materials used to refurbish the mobile homes, Thompson said.
WMHA representatives and members said they could donate mobile homes indefinitely to the program if there was a source of money to get them refurbished.
“We have a stock of houses with no place in the market,” said Reitzner of Steenberg Homes.
“The answer to this dilemma is to get more funding to keep them out of the landfill, get people a home, and recycle these old homes.”
Some help may be coming from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said Kinzler, because recycling the homes saves vital landfill space.
“Many of the people who have been helped with this program have fallen on hard times and this is their only chance of ever owning their own home,” Kinzler said.
“It’s wonderful when we can help someone like this.”
