These Mainers may be the 1st to use a new law to purchase their mobile home park

The windows of Janet Fournier’s single-wide mobile home in Brunswick are open on this warm summer day. Fournier and her neighbor Tom Benoit point to the wild blueberry fields that can be seen at the edge of Linnhaven Mobile Home Center.

“You can really see them well from — well, I’d say from my street — because it’s completely open,” Benoit said. “It’s beautiful.”

Like many of their neighbors, Fournier and Benoit moved to Linnhaven wanting something affordable and easy to maintain as they got older. When they learned that the park’s long-time owner wanted to sell, they feared the worst.

Benoit said residents worried that a new owner would evict them and use the property for some other purpose.

“Nobody has any place to go. I mean you know you can’t take… 277 trailers and move them all locally,” he said.

A new state law enacted last year requires that mobile home residents be given advance notice of any sale, and it allows them a chance to try to bid on the property themselves. Manufactured homes, housing advocates have said, are often seen as one of the few remaining affordable options.

But the results have so far been mixed. Out-of-state investors are in the process of purchasing several large parks in southern Maine for tens of millions of dollars each, leaving nearly 700 households wondering whether the new owners will increase the rent or evict them from their homes.

Fournier recalls asking the Linnhaven owner Kurt Scarponi about the new law.

“He just smiled and he said, ‘Well, the person that comes up with the money.’ He said, ‘And if you sweeten the pot, or sweeten deal,'” Fournier said. “So I kind of laughed at that and said, ‘OK.’ And we did all three of those things.”

Within one week, the group had gathered enough resident signatures to form the Blueberry Fields Cooperative. They eventually offered just more than $26 million — $50,000 more than an anonymous buyer — to purchase the park. They secured letters of interest from a few banks and others and an initial loan to cover a deposit.

And their offer was accepted.

“I told some of the folks, if I could do a cartwheel, I would,” said Fournier with a laugh.

“Yeah, you did say that, exactly!” Benoit said.

“It was just elation,” Fournier added.

But residents at other mobile home parks in Maine haven’t fared as well. MaineHousing said it has been notified of a total of 14 manufactured home and RV parks that have gone up for sale since last fall.

The vast majority have been small parks with just a handful of units. But there have been larger deals.

A resident-offer to buy two mobile home parks in Old Orchard Beach for a total of nearly $40 million was rejected in favor of another bidder.

And this winter, residents at Country Lane Estates and Stetson Brook Estates in Lewiston learned that their parks would be sold for a total of nearly $22 million.

“A lot of us are elderly, retired people,” said Sheila, a Country Lane resident who asked to go by her first name only out of fear of retribution. “And that’s scary when you’re thinking that when you move there, you’re going there to never have to move again.”

The residents worried that their monthly lot rent of about $385 would go up under a new owner.

“We’re just at the mercy of whoever buys the park and whatever they tell us, because there is no option for these people, myself included,” said Jaime, another Country Lane resident. “We’re here, we live here, and this is where we’re going to be. We don’t have a contingency plan.”

The residents organized, but their offer, which came in $1,000 above the competing bid, was rejected.

It would have taken up to three months for residents to secure financing and close on the deal, while the winning bidders could potentially pay cash up front, Jaime said.

Still, she’s disappointed.

“About 350 homes, approximately, have supported this family for years,” Jaime said. “Why would you not give us the same opportunity to do that for ourselves? Why would you not give us the chance to do that in our community? That’s what’s really sad and kind of heartbreaking to me.”

All three communities followed the same process under Maine’s opportunity to purchase law, said Nora Gosselin, a market development and acquisition specialist with the non-profit Cooperative Development Institute who helped residents from Old Orchard Beach, Lewiston and Brunswick attempt to buy their parks.

“There can be, I would use the word stigma or bias against the residents being credible, legitimate, bonified buyers,” she said.

Maine has more than 700 manufactured and mobile home parks. Ten are resident-owned communities, which formed before Maine passed the opportunity to purchase law last year.

Gosselin said that the Brunswick residents were organized and engaged, and they had support from town officials and local legislative representatives. But she believes one factor worked in their favor.

“I think it is the fact that the Linnhaven park owner was willing to come to the table here and see the benefit of resident ownership,” she said.

And while Gosselin and other housing advocates say they hope the Brunswick sale will serve as a proof of concept for mobile home residents and for park owners, some say they’d like to see Maine’s law revised.

Jaime at County Lane Estates said residents should be granted the right of first refusal when their park comes up for sale, as is the law in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Meanwhile, the California-based company BoaVida, which owns more than 200 mobile home and RV parks around the country, has purchased the Lewiston communities. The park residents there have recently formed a tenants association.

Residents from the Old Orchard Beach parks say they’ve been contacted by real estate investment company Follett USA about plans for taking over the properties.

In Brunswick, the residents are under contract to purchase the Linnhaven park, and the property will be appraised later this month.

Owner Kurt Scarponi declined comment until the deal is closed.

But Janet Fournier said she spoke with him about the sale, and she believes he wanted to protect the legacy of his family, which has owned the park for the last 70 years.

“We ended up talking for an hour, about the process, about this community that he’s worked at for his entire adult life,” Fournier said. “And toward the end the conversation I said, ‘So what made you decide to do it for us?’ And he said, ‘I did it for the tenants. I care about the tenants.'”

The residents have a mid-September deadline to secure financing and close on the sale.