‘Not going to live here again’: Vermont manufactured-home residents return to destruction

adminMarch 29, 2024

0 0 5 minutes read

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

Hattie Wood had been through floods at the Berlin Mobile Home Park before. The first arrived during her first spring in the park, almost 30 years ago. It ruined her family’s shed but didn’t reach their home. In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene brought water up to the base of the residence, but again it was spared.

This time, “it took everything,” Wood said on Thursday afternoon, as she returned home for the first time since Vermont’s historic flooding overtook the park earlier this week.

After police officers and firefighters urged residents to evacuate the park on Monday, Wood and her family slept in their truck outside a Walmart, and then at an RV park nearby. Now, they could see that the raging water had ripped the stairs from their deck. Wood crossed the gap gingerly, everything coated in a thick layer of mud. The front door had swelled and wouldn’t open. Her grandson, Steven, broke through a window and let her and her husband, Delbert, inside.

A man pets a black cat inside a home and another man walks away from the camera — Hattie Wood’s grandson, Steven Griffin, and husband, Delbert Wood, return to the flooded Berlin home on Thursday.

They found a home destroyed. A bed sat neatly made but was saturated with water. A walker in the living room was coated in silt. Furniture had overturned. The floor and walls buckled.

“Well, this is it,” Wood said, assessing the flood’s toll on her home of nearly three decades. “Not going to live here again.”

Over a decade ago, Tropical Storm Irene exposed the vulnerability of manufactured-home park residents to flooding in Vermont. While it’s too early to get a comprehensive picture of the damage to such communities from this week’s floods, it’s clear that many took a hard hit. At the Berlin park, most of the 30 homes looked like Wood’s. In Ludlow, floodwaters ravaged the Black River Mobile Home Court, turning the park into a river. And those who lost their homes — relatively affordable ones in Vermont’s tight housing market — have few places to turn.

A person pulls a rolling cart over a muddy road — Juanita Boardman, of Plainfield, walks down a muddy Cedar Drive in Berlin as she helps her daughter with her home on Thursday, July 13, 2023.

After Irene, manufactured homes made up a disproportionate share of housing damaged in the storm. At the time, they made up 15% of Irene-damaged homes while constituting just 7% of Vermont’s total housing stock, according to a post-storm analysis by the state. Seventeen parks across Vermont experienced some degree of flooding then.

Affordable and vulnerable

There are a few reasons manufactured-home parks are at higher risk of flooding, according to Kelly Hamshaw, a senior lecturer in the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of Vermont, and a PhD student focused on resilience and mobile home communities.

One factor: the locations of the parks themselves. A large share sit on floodplains. “Many of them are older and built before land use regulations in the state that would have otherwise prevented communities from being placed there,” Hamshaw said. Land in flood-prone areas was likely less expensive, she added. The Berlin Mobile Home Park sits in a floodway next to Stevens Branch creek, with just one road leading in and out, making escaping flooding particularly risky, Hamshaw said.

Many parks have aging water and electrical systems that are more at risk of failing when hit by severe weather, and older homes built to outdated housing codes lack the physical integrity to withstand damage, Hamshaw said.

A man stands on muddy ground wearing boots and takes a photo of a manufactured home with a phone. — Berlin resident Bob Merchant takes photos of the flood damage at his home on Thursday, July 13, 2023.

Further complicating the picture is the fact that residents are often tenants and owners at the same time: beholden to the companies they rent their lots from, while also on the hook for damage to their houses. Some parks have shifted toward a co-op model over the last few years, though, which means residents own and operate them.

Since Irene, the state has funneled resources into mitigating flooding risks at manufactured-home parks and dedicated a share of COVID relief funds to moving lots out of floodplains and river corridors. Some parks do seem to have fared better: Weston’s, which suffered extensive damage from Irene, saw minimal flooding in homes this time around, Hamshaw said. The park is now a co-op, and many lots there have been elevated, she said.

But plenty of people still live in harm’s way. Hamshaw’s team estimates that 10 manufactured-home communities experienced some degree of flooding this week, based on scanning aerial imagery and local media coverage. She said that tally is certain to change as the team assesses the impacts on the ground next week. The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity also expects to canvass parks, taking stock of the damage and providing flood response information to residents, according to Sandrine Kibuey, director of statewide housing advocacy programs.

An excavator digs out access to a manufactured home that was flooded on Thursday, July 13, 2023.

Vermont Emergency Management did not respond to an email inquiring about how many manufactured-home parks sustained flooding this week. At a press conference on Friday, Gov. Phil Scott did not provide details on the status of parks when asked by a reporter but said his administration is “very aware of the situation.” He also emphasized his work supporting manufactured-home park residents after Irene, when he served as lieutenant governor.

‘Where are you going to go?’

At the Berlin Mobile Home Park on Thursday, residents took stock of their next steps. Bob and Mary Merchant, an elderly couple who’d spent the prior few days bouncing between shelters in Berlin and Barre, returned to find their home relatively spared. They gathered medications and a change of clothes and headed out with their caretaker. Few were as lucky. Families with young kids carried out piles of their belongings on sleds through thick mud as excavators worked to clear the road. Cars sat totaled in driveways.

Randy Rouleau, owner of the park, said he intends to rebuild but anticipates the process will be slow. “I don’t think there’s any near-term probability of anybody — any current resident — quickly being back in there or even saving their homes,” he said.

A woman looks into a room at the end of a hallway — On Thursday, Hattie Wood looks around her home of nearly 30 years, now severely damaged by flooding.

Some residents said they had flood insurance; others said they didn’t. Wood isn’t covered. She said she’s waiting to see what kind of aid her family can get through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and figuring out where they can stay in the long term.

“It makes you not want to live down here anymore,” Wood said, looking around at the remains of the park. “But where are you going to go?”

Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message.