The right side of the tracks: St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County gives facelift to Saginaw Mobile Home Park 

A decade ago, Saginaw Mobile Home Park teetered on the brink. 

The park, developed in the 1950s, had become a hodgepodge of dilapidated trailers with rundown water and septic systems. Crime was high. Children played in muddy potholes on dirt roads at the 41-space park, located in a rural stretch north of Cottage Grove. 

These days, Saginaw Mobile Park has a different vibe. Local officials and nonprofit leaders gathered Friday, Sept. 18, to mark a milestone in the park’s transformation, which started when nonprofit St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County purchased the property in 2017 and started making improvements. 

The most recent upgrade: The nonprofit installed 10 energy-efficient manufactured homes. The additions include eight two-bedroom, one-bathroom houses slightly more than 700 square feet and two one-bedroom, one-bathroom homes of about 500 square feet. 

“What’s special is this is a place where community members were already living,” Bethany Cartledge, executive director of St. Vincent’s, said in an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield. “They didn’t feel safe. We were able to acquire it, rehab it, and transform it. So that’s what’s special —  when you can take a space where people already live, where they’re struggling, they don’t have the support they need, and look at how we can enhance that.”

St. Vincent’s partner, Eugene-based nonprofit HOPE Community Homes, built the structures, which were assembled before transport. (HOPE stands for Housing Options Production Enterprise.) The homes have emergency-efficient windows, appliances, lighting and ventilation systems. 

That arrangement, with advance construction, limits the exposure of building materials to the elements, said Jacon Taylor, a community development official with the nonprofit. 

St. Vincent has put about $3.1 million into the project so far, which includes purchasing the site and the upgrades. 

The project is supported with a $1.4 million grant from Oregon Housing and Community Services and a $1 million permanent loan from the Network for Oregon Affordable Housing. Other nonprofit organizations and community groups have chipped in to support the work. 

Cartledge said: “The chance to live in these solid, truly comfortable homes can be life-changing for low-income individuals and families.”

Speakers at the event included Lane County Commissioner Heather Buch, who was a special projects director for St. Vincent when the nonprofit considered purchasing the site. Buch recalled visiting the park in 2017, before the purchase. The conditions on view were discouraging, she said, and “gave us pause, because it was so rough.”

Then a school bus pulled up and about 20 kids popped out to arrive home. That sight was a reminder of who benefits from the work – and they ended up taking the project on. 

Work started right away. 

St. Vincent began overhauling the mobile home park in 2017, reopening it in 2018. The muddy dirt roads were paved. The park also has an office and community center with laundry facilities, restrooms and showers. 

The nonprofit also has replaced other units with new manufactured homes. New dwellings are now in 13 of the park’s 14 original manufactured-home lots. Another two of the smaller new manufactured homes are in former recreational vehicle spaces.

Through 2020, upgrades included overhauling the water and sewer systems, a fenced playground for children and a community garden. 

People referred from South Lane Mental Health will live in a couple of the one-person units. 

St. Vincent will make most units available to people who need affordable housing with income restrictions limited to 80% of the area median income. That’s an annual income limit of $55,120 for one person, rising with the size of the family. It’s $78,720 for a family of four, for example. 

There’s already a waitlist of applicants. People will move into the new homes sometime in the next few months.