Maine lawmakers consider bill to stop mobile home park sales for three months
May 14—State lawmakers are considering a three-month moratorium on the sale of mobile home parks, a move that would disrupt at least two pending sales in Maine.
Supporters say a pause on mobile home sales would allow lawmakers to evaluate a handful of mobile home-related bills, while also giving the residents of Friendly Village in Gorham a fair shot at purchasing their park.
But opponents argue the stoppage would infringe on the rights of private property owners, and one would-be seller said it could sink a sale that is critical to both him and his tenants.
Proposed by Sen. Chip Curry, D-Belfast, the bill would bar the sale of any mobile home park in Maine until Oct. 31. Because the bill is proposed as an emergency bill, it would go into effect immediately after passage, although it would require two-thirds majorities in both chambers.
Some supporters suggested adding an exemption for residents trying to purchase their parks, as well as an extension of the moratorium through the end of the year.
Curry told the Housing and Economic Development Committee that he updated the bill's language after hearing for months that the state is losing affordable housing to private equity investors looking to profit "and I would argue exploitatively" from low-income Mainers.
Curry proposed the moratorium "to give us time to catch up on the regulatory environment so we can best protect our most vulnerable members of the community," he said.
BILLS ON THE TABLE
Mobile home parks in Maine and across the county are increasingly being purchased by out-of-state investors who then raise the monthly lot rents, in some cases by two or three times, according to national data. An estimated one-fifth of Maine's 468 licensed parks are now owned by out-of-state investors.
Following passage of a 2023 "opportunity to purchase law," several communities, including those in Brunswick, Bangor and Monmouth, have formed cooperatives to purchase their parks. But more than twice as many have failed, even with offers just above those of the competition.
Lawmakers are currently considering several bills to protect mobile homeowners, including one that would give residents the "right of first refusal" to purchase their park when it goes up for sale.
Another would attach a hefty per-lot fee to the purchase of a community (on top of the purchase price) to be paid to MaineHousing to replenish a statewide program designed to help residents buy their parks. Resident-owned co-ops and affordable housing groups would be exempt from the fee.
Another bill would eliminate the real estate transfer tax on sales of mobile home parks to resident buyers.
The committee tabled two similar bills Tuesday that aim to prevent sudden and dramatic lot-rent increases.
Rep. Cheryl Golek, D-Harpswell, who proposed one of the rent control bills, asked that committee members consider a freeze on mobile home rents if they decide to push her bill to next session.
"These are people's lives that we're talking about," she said. "This is not a political, divided issue. We have hundreds and hundreds of people begging us ... to do something to protect them."
A TALE OF TWO PARKS
Dawn Beaulieu, a resident of Friendly Village for almost 30 years, said residents plan to submit an offer Monday — one that is higher than the $22 million offer from Crown Communities, the prospective buyer.
But many sellers don't want to give up a sure sale in favor of an offer from residents who may struggle to pull the money together.
"(The moratorium) would give us the amount of time we need to put a good faith motion forward with financing, to show them that they're still going to get what they're looking for," Beaulieu said.
Nora Gosselin, director of resident acquisitions at the Cooperative Development Institute, said she's watched the Legislature this session approach the "complicated issue of mobile home park preservation with huge creativity and thoughtfulness." The institute assists residents who are trying to buy their parks.
The bill, she said, would weave together the committee's work with Friendly Village's "Herculean" organizing efforts to buy the park.
"A moratorium on large park transactions will allow the protections crafted by this committee ... to kick into effect in time to benefit the almost 300 households at Friendly Village," she said.
But Michael Oneglia, the owner of two parks in Belfast, said the bill could kill a deal that he has spent tens of thousands of dollars and more than 10 months trying to close.
Oneglia is under contract to sell Seacoast Village, a 22-lot park, and Hyland Estates, a 68-lot park, and is set to close in the coming weeks. Residents were not interested in purchasing the parks, he said, so he proceeded with a private sale.
But if the moratorium goes into effect, "I will absolutely lose my buyer," he told the committee. "I have a personal situation where I need to sell and this will really screw things up for me and my tenants."
If the deal falls through, Oneglia said, he would have to cut back the parks' services to just the essentials, dramatically lowering the standard of living for his tenants, who will pay the same amount of money while he recovers from the financial hit.
"I just can't believe we're even at a point where we're talking about a moratorium of the sale of a private piece of property," he said. "It seems un-American and it's completely inappropriate."
'MORE HARM THAN GOOD'
Others who opposed the moratorium bill, including many park owners like Oneglia, said a moratorium could devalue their properties and risks being an unconstitutional taking of property.
Tina Marie Smith, vice president of State Manufactured Homes in Scarborough, said the bill was "created with unsubstantiated hysteria" and that it and the provisions being considered in the other bills threaten the future of their industry.
She asked that legislators not paint all park owners with the same brush and consider families like hers who have owned the same park for generations.
"You're systematically trying to remove what we all thought would be a generational legacy," she said. "I consider all of the legislation that has been unleashed upon us to be extremely one-sided."
Sandra Hinkley, president of the Manufactured Housing Association of Maine and the owner of Maple Hill Estates, a 110-lot park in Mechanic Falls, said a moratorium would be "nothing short of imprisonment" for community owners in Maine.
That bill, along with the other mobile home-related bills being considered, would punish people who have provided affordable housing in the state for decades, "threatening our property rights, devaluing our businesses and setting a precedent that the state can choose when and how we sell our businesses and to whom," she said.
Hinkley suggested that if legislators are concerned about losing affordable housing, they work with MaineHousing to provide funding for park owners looking to expand.
"(The moratorium) will do more harm than good and does not address the real objective, which is to create more housing," she said.
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