Sandy Ossolinski, 67, lives about three miles from the beach. Still, she's filled her home with reminders that it's not far away. She points to the jar of seashells in the living room of her two-bedroom manufactured home in Old Orchard Village.
"I'm a beachoholic," she said. "So being this close to the beach is wonderful."
Ossolinski moved to Old Orchard Village four years ago, fulfilling a dream to move to Maine and live near the ocean. She's a retired teacher and pays $522 a month to rent the lot where her home sits.
It's a good fit for her, she said, and many of the other residents here on fixed incomes.
But in late January, Ossolinski and her neighbors learned that the long-time owner of Old Orchard Village and Atlantic Village mobile home parks in Old Orchard Beach were being sold to an unknown buyer.
A new state law enacted last year required advance notice to the residents about the sale, and it gives them a chance to try to purchase the community themselves.
It's common for buyers looking to purchase mobile home parks to be anonymous, said the non-profit Cooperative Development Institute, which helps communities like Old Orchard Village become resident-owned neighborhoods.
Still, the experience is frightening and overwhelming for mobile home residents, said Pat Schwebler, the co-director of CDI's Resident Owned Communities Program for New England.
"So many out of state investors are coming in and are driving Mainers off their land, out of their houses, by just continuing to raise rents for profits," she said.
But Schwebler said with Maine's new law, residents have the possibility of being able to conserve hundreds of affordable homes for decades to come.
"If we own it ourselves, we don't need a profit," Ossolinski said. "Conglomerations need a profit. And so if we can keep the rent low enough, and from year to year we don't have to raise it, I think people could rest a lot easier."
So Ossolinski and her neighbors began organizing with help from the Cooperative Development Institute. They gathered just enough signatures to form the Seacoast Village Cooperative and recently made their own purchase offer. Ossolinski was voted in as the co-op's interim president.
Maine has more than 700 manufactured and mobile home parks. Ten are resident-owned communities, where lot rents range from $290 to about $480 a month, Schwebler said.
Many residents worry that a new owner from a large, out-of-state company will neglect the property, which has about 370 homes. After years of relatively minimal increases, the monthly lot rent is expected to go up by $75 in June. But with a new owner in place, residents fear it will go up even more.
Ossolinski recalls one of her neighbors breaking down in tears.
"To see this little elderly lady crying saying that she's going to be homeless... it broke my heart," she said.
MaineHousing said that it has been notified of 10 mobile home parks in the state that have come on the market since late last year.
Four of those communities have pending offers, and combined at least 1,000 affordable homes are at risk of being sold, said Liza Fleming-Ives, the executive director of the Genesis Community Loan Fund.
"There's a lot of interest in mobile home communities across the country from investor buyers," she said. "We're seeing kind of a transition happening in sort of who's owning these communities."
Many park owners in Maine are approaching retirement age, said Fleming-Ives, and out-of-state buyers are swooping in with tempting purchase offers.
"There are a couple of communities that we've heard have offers at [about] $20 million, $27 million, and then Old Orchard is the largest community that we've heard about," she said. "So that's quite a bit higher than we've seen in the past."
The offer for Old Orchard Village was $40.4 million. Ossolinski said the residents matched it.
"And how we're going to get that money.... we have no idea," she said. "But we are dedicated to trying."
Under Maine's new opportunity to purchase law, the residents will have about three months to secure financing, if their offer is accepted.
Fleming-Ives said the Genesis Fund will help them find financing, through a combination of banks and community lenders, MaineHousing funds and other sources.
Gov. Janet Mills has also proposed a new $5 million housing preservation fund to help resident-owned communities purchase their parks. The Legislature must approve the governor's proposal first.
But Fleming-Ives said she sees the preservation fund as a potential tool to help finalize deals like the one pending in Old Orchard Village.
"It will be another resource, especially right now given the sale prices and the interest rate environment, which might make the difference and help make a resident purchase possible."
In the meantime, the residents at Old Orchard Village are waiting for word on their offer, which included a letter to the park's owner. The letter said the residents wanted to live in a well-maintained community, with the same standards that the property owners had set for decades.
"We don't know if that influenced him at all, but I'm hoping. I'm hoping," Ossolinski said. "A lot of people are saying they don't think it's going to happen. But I don't know. I think it's going to."
The park owner has until Friday to accept or deny their offer.
