A proposed grant would give the residents of Bend’s Century Drive Mobile Home Park ownership of the park through a state-sponsored purchase agreement.

The Oregon State Housing Council is set to vote today on a $600,000 grant proposal that would help the residents purchase the park, on Southwest 15th Street near Simpson Avenue, and pay some of the operating costs.

The funds come from an initiative passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2009. The initiative set funds aside to expand the supply of lower-income housing across the state, said Ben Pray, spokesman for Oregon Housing and Community Services.

“It gives the residents a chance to create a cooperative to purchase, run and maintain the park,” Pray said.

The housing council has to approve the proposal before the plan can move forward.

The park residents would team up with Community and Shelter Assistance of Oregon, a nonprofit that develops and maintains affordable housing across the state.

The organization is already working with park residents to facilitate the purchase, said Rose Mary Ojeda, the nonprofit’s manufactured home park preservation program manager.

Under the proposal, residents of the 60-unit mobile home park would appoint a board of directors, set rent prices and approve an operating budget for the park.

“It’s all democratically controlled,” Ojeda said.

Community and Shelter Assistance of Oregon helped facilitate a similar purchase agreement at the Green Pastures Mobile Home Park in Redmond in 2009.

The Century Drive park would be the sixth mobile home park in Oregon that the organization has helped convert into a cooperative, Ojeda said. If the state approves the Century Drive purchase agreement, the deal would take effect at the end of July.

Timothy Larkin, a co-owner of the defunct Bend company Summit 1031 Exchange, purchased the Century Drive park in 2005 for an undisclosed price, Deschutes County property records show.

Larkin and the other Summit co-owners were found guilty of wire fraud and money-laundering conspiracies earlier this month, after misleading clients by investing their funds in personal real estate deals across the region, including the mobile home park purchase.

Many of the Summit properties have been resold following the company’s December 2008 bankruptcy.