The City of San Luis Obispo recently won a second-place prize of $20,000 from the National League of Cities for working to support community members living in unsafe and/or expired manufactured homes.
Manufactured homes have an intended lifespan of about 20 years. Based on conversations with manufactured home park managers in SLO, about 10% to 20% of manufactured homes are at or past the end of their useful life.
City staff saw an opportunity to expand the City’s existing Green and Healthy Home Service so it can also connect manufactured home residents living in poor conditions with community service providers when repairs or replacement are needed beyond energy upgrades. These connections may include community programs for minor home repair, affordable housing and homelessness prevention services, or City Code Enforcement services.
The City will use these funds to launch a pilot program consisting of a concierge service that will first focus on 10 to 15 homes in local manufactured housing communities. The pilot program will allow staff to test the service design and delivery and fine tune it so that it can be scaled up and eventually used by anyone living in a manufactured home in San Luis Obispo.
The City of San Luis Obispo was one of eight cities and villages selected through a competitive process to develop this housing solution through its participation in the Healthy Housing Innovation Cohort, a program of the NLC. A multi-disciplinary team of City staff partnered with tech company Tolemi for about 15 months to collect and analyze data on the conditions of the local manufactured housing stock.
The next step is developing a plan for rolling out the pilot program. More information will be posted to www.slocity.org when available.