Expanding affordable housing in Maine

By Gov. Janet Mills, D-Maine

You know, we want every person at every stage of their life to be confident they can rent or buy a home that’s the right size for their family and for their budget and be able to stay there as long as they want. No one should be afraid that a sudden rent increase will break their budget or that someone will buy the land right out from under them and raise rents.

When Hidden Circle Mobile Home Park in Jay went up for sale, that’s exactly what the residents were afraid of: someone hiking up the rent and eventually pushing people out of their homes.

According to the 2024 data, nearly 10% of Maine people live in manufactured housing, including mobile home communities. Forty-five thousand people in Maine live in a mobile home park. Out-of-state companies have started buying up some of Maine’s mobile home parks and then significantly raising rents, in some cases as high as 50%.

And rent increases don’t necessarily mean nicer parks either, no improvements necessarily. Corporations know that residents can’t easily pick up their home and move it elsewhere, no matter how much the company neglects the park. As one resident in Jay said, “At one time, the park used to look nice. Now they’ve stopped that, and yet they have increased our rent. If this continues to have higher lot rent payments, then I’m not going to be able to live where I am.”

The buying up of mobile home parks by out-of-state entities is a nationwide trend, but here in Maine, we’re doing something about it. Last year, we enacted the “Right of First Refusal” law, which requires that residents of a mobile home park be given a chance to purchase their park if they can put together a matching offer when it’s put up for sale. That measure strengthened our 2023 “Opportunity to Purchase” law, which required that residents of a mobile home park be allowed to present a competitive offer to buy their park if it’s put up for sale.

Well, earlier this week, I visited Jay to celebrate the first residents to take advantage of our new “Right of First Refusal” law to purchase their park, instead of being left to the whims of an out-of-state buyer. Hidden Circle is now the 14th resident-owned manufactured home community in Maine. Resident-owned—isn’t that great?

In addition to financing from the Genesis Fund and Maine Community Foundation, Hidden Circle Mobile Home Community was able to make the $1 million purchase to protect these 31 lots with $310,000 as well from our Mobile Home Park Preservation Fund.

My administration and the Legislature dedicated $8 million in total in recent years to MaineHousing to create this Mobile Home Park Preservation Fund to assist residents in purchasing their own mobile home parks. With that funding, more than 900 homes are expected to be preserved across six parks from Brunswick to Bangor, Turner to Saco.

Last month, nation-leading laws to further protect mobile home park residents took effect in Maine, including laws to limit rent increases, laws to make it easier to expand mobile home parks, and laws creating a way for mobile homeowners to obtain a mortgage — and that could save them hundreds of dollars every month in housing costs.

I was proud to sign those bills into law earlier this year to protect residents in Jay and other towns across Maine from predatory, out-of-state companies. Now, the residents of Hidden Circle Park in Jay have control over how much rent to charge and how that money will be spent. They have control over their common infrastructure, and they can make improvements as they see fit.

Well, we still have a lot more work to do to protect Maine people and mobile home parks from being exploited by companies who simply want to use them to extract a profit, but I am proud of how we worked together with the Legislature to preserve this vital form of housing for people in Maine.