Dawn Beaulieu lives in a double wide on a corner lot in Friendly Village Mobile Home Park in Gorham.
It's the perfect size for her and terrier mix, Bella.
She has lived in this home for more than two decades and in Friendly Village for close to 30 years. The mortgage, on top of the monthly lot rent of just more than $600, is a lot with her single income, but she makes it work.
"I've paid 22.5 years of a 25-year mortgage. I have two and a half years left," Beaulieu said. "And then I own my home. I am scared to lose it before I get to that point."
She also worries about many of her neighbors in this community of 302 lots, with 263 occupied homes. There are young families, and some are older and on fixed incomes.
"People are here because they can't afford to buy a house with land and that sort of thing," Beaulieu said. "This is an affordable living option for them, and we're very worried that affordable living is going to be taken away."
In March, Beaulieu and her neighbors received a notice in the mail. Crown Communities, a Wyoming-based investment firm, had offered to buy their park — along with seven others in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island — as part of a portfolio for $87.5 million.
Maine's opportunity to purchase law, enacted in 2023, requires advance notice to residents of any sale. It also allows residents a chance to form a cooperative and submit an offer to purchase the property themselves.
Earlier this spring, Friendly Village residents decided to organize and form a cooperative, electing Beaulieu as the board president. No other residents in Maine have managed to successfully purchase their park when it's been a part of multi-state portfolio sale.
'We're not the type of individuals to put our fate into other people's hands," Beaulieu said. "We had an option to put our fate in our own hands, and we took it."
'They know people just have to take it'
In the last year and a half, more than 30 mobile home parks in Maine have gone on the market.
The vast majority have been small parks with just a handful of units. But there have been larger deals. Residents at a few large communities in Old Orchard Beach and Lewiston organized in an effort to purchase but lost to Follett USA and BoaVida, respectively. Both are large out-of-state real estate investors.
Residents at nine communities have formed cooperatives and tried to purchase their parks. Three — including one in Brunswick and another in Bangor — have been successful. The third, a resident cooperative in Monmouth, closed this week on the purchase of their park.
"Our concern is that if these large, out-of-state corporations and equity firms that come into Maine and buy these parks and jack up the rents and make those units unaffordable for folks who are there now and also future generations, then we will have lost something important to Maine people," said Greg Payne, senior housing policy advisor for Gov. Janet Mills.
He said preserving local mobile home park ownership is a top priority for the administration, especially now. Maine needs to build tens of thousands of new homes by the end of the decade, but state programs that helped subsidize affordable housing construction are drying up in a tight budget year.
That makes preserving what affordable housing Maine has more important, Payne said. And most mobile home residents are particularly vulnerable to sudden rent increases and changes in park ownership.
Mobile home residents typically rent the lots beneath their homes. And moving a mobile home, if it can be moved at all, costs several thousand dollars. When lot rents go up, residents are often stuck, Payne said.
"That is exactly what these equity firms are playing with," he said. "They know that people can't move. They know that people just have to take it."
Residents at several Maine mobile home parks that have been purchased by out-of-state investors in recent years have seen lot rents increase, according to a recent analysis from the nonprofit Genesis Fund.
Marieke Giasson, who lives at Bay Bridge Estates in Brunswick, said monthly lot rent typically went up about $15 or $20 a year. She paid $410 a month in 2021. Then, Legacy Communities, an Arizona company that owns about 70 manufactured home parks around the country, bought her park.
In the last three years, Giasson said rent has increased by 46%. She now pays about $600 a month.
"I've got a couple more rent increases left before I can't be here," she said.
Giasson said one of her older neighbors who relies on a monthly Supplemental Security Income of less than $1,000, was recently served an eviction notice.
"Where are these people going to go? I'm not currently one of these people, but that's on the horizon if things keep going the way they are," Giasson said.
Maine lawmakers debate new protections
The Mills administration is backing several pieces of legislation designed to support mobile home residents who want to buy their parks or prevent large equity firms from buying them in the first place.
One proposal would impose a temporary moratorium on some mobile home park sales. Another measure would require certain corporations to pay a transfer fee for each mobile home lot purchased through a park sale.
The collected fees would go toward a Mobile Home Park Preservation and Assistance Fund, which would be used to help resident cooperatives finance the purchase of their communities. The Legislature is also considering adding more money to the governor's recently-created Mobile Home Preservation Fund.
And under a third bill, Maine resident cooperatives that match or exceed the sale price of their mobile home park would receive a right of first refusal, even if they can't come up with a cash offer like their corporate competitors.
Similar provisions are on the books in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, among other states.
But Therese Desfosses, president of State Manufactured Homes, told state lawmakers this spring that a right of first refusal proposal would give residents an unfair advantage over other potential buyers.
"The residents should have equal standing with any other interested purchaser, not special treatment that usurps our rights," said Desfosses, whose family company owns two manufactured housing communities in Scarborough.
But Dawn Beaulieu of Friendly Village doesn't see it as special treatment. Residents, she said, deserve more tools to successfully compete with large equity firms.
"Why are we not giving the residents of the state of Maine every opportunity to control their own fate?" she said. "Why are we keeping a law on the books that almost gives the advantage to these out-of-state monopolies and conglomerates that are coming in and making these purchases and buying up land in Maine?"
On Tuesday, the Friendly Village residents submitted their own bid to purchase the park for more than the community's initial asking price of $22 million.
They're waiting for a response from the park's owners. And the right of first refusal bill and other measures await further votes in the Legislature. The proposals include emergency clauses, meaning they would go into effect immediately if they pass the Legislature and are signed by Gov. Mills, rather than the typical three-month waiting period.
Meantime, another mobile home park has gone up for sale. An anonymous buyer is offering $3.1 million to buy Spruce Ridge Mobile Home Park in Winslow, according to state officials.
