Getting Involved With Your Manufactured Home Community
If you live in a manufactured home community, or are looking to move to one in the near future, you might ask yourself about how to be an active member of that community. What are some of the different activities you can take part in, or clubs or organizations that might be on-site or nearby?
Thankfully, if you live in a manufactured home community or mobile home park, most likely you’ll have no shortage of things to do with your fellow community residents. Here are a few of the key attractions for residents in manufactured home communities to take part in:
Finding Amenities
One of the biggest draws for residents living in manufactured home communities are the amenities available to them. When living there, residents can access community amenities like:
- Swimming pools and spas
- Dog parks
- Playgrounds
- Lounges and clubhouses
- Tennis and pickleball courts, among other athletic facilities
- Lakefront or ocean views
These amenities are usually available for all residents of a community at any given point, save for those that are seasonally dependent such as pools and outdoor walking trails.
If you need help finding out whether your community, or a community you’re interested in moving to, has a specific amenity, there are a few ways to go about that.
Firstly, a community may choose to list the amenities they offer on their MHVillage listing. This is a great starting point for residents looking at communities online or current community residents that aren’t sure of how to contact their community’s ownership.
If you’re currently a resident of a community, you can also contact the park’s ownership (which can be usually found online) and receive a list of amenities. You may also receive a pamphlet or brochure when you move in or tour a mobile home community with this information.
Finding Clubs and Organizations
In addition to finding out which amenities your community offers, you can also contact your community to find out if there are any neighborhood clubs you can take part in.
Many communities may offer a weekly shuffleboard gathering, game night, or some other kind of social function. Or, there may be an on-site club for groups within your community (such as women or veterans) that you can join.
However, if your community doesn’t have the right kind of club or organization that you’re looking for, it may be worth contacting community management to see if you can start one yourself.
For example, if you’d like to create a monthly book club within a community, but it doesn’t exist just yet, then that’s your cue to work with your community’s management or board to create one. Many communities even host these kinds of events within their own clubhouses or lounges, too!
Manufactured Home Community Boards
Earlier, we referenced “Community Boards” – but what are they? How do they work?
Resident-owned communities, in place of ownership, may have a “board” in place that’s comprised of residents that share ownership of the community. Residents can choose to engage with these boards by either attending their meetings, if they hold them publicly, or running to be on the board itself.
Each resident-owned community will have a different guideline
The board, in these cases, is able to play a direct role in shaping that community’s bylaws and policies, as well as the fixtures and amenities that residents can engage with.