Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
The residents of a Bangor mobile home park are $1 million closer to owning their own community, thanks to funding from the Maine state housing authority announced Thursday.
The money will be appropriated from this year’s supplemental budget, which set aside $5 million in one-time funds to allow MaineHousing, the state’s housing authority, to support the purchases of mobile home parks by their residents.
“It’s a really good bargain for us in terms of creating affordable homes at a relatively low price,” MaineHousing spokesperson Scott Thistle said.
The move brings the residents of Cedar Falls, a 129-lot mobile home park on Bangor’s Finson Road, closer to their goal of fundraising $8 million by January to buy their community over a Canadian corporate bidder. Earlier this week, the Bangor City Council announced it would contribute $500,000 toward the residents’ effort, too.
Under a new Maine law, Cedar Falls residents were able to organize and bid to buy their own park after learning it went up for sale last summer. They did so out of fear that a new corporate owner would raise lot rents unsustainably, as has happened in other parks around Maine and the nation.
“We’ll prevent some out-of-state owner from [turning it] into some high-end residential or or commercial property that would price a lot of people out of the market,” Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Penobscot, who has been an advocate for Cedar Falls residents, said. “The whole thing provides affordable housing, but also stability and promotes homeownership for people. Those are all positive things for our community.”
The Canadian company that was outbid by the Cedar Falls cooperative told the Bangor Daily News it had only planned to raise lot rents by $25 to $35 a year and were responsible park owners. Ronnie Pinkham, the resident co-op’s president, said even that increase would force many living on fixed incomes out of the park.
MaineHousing will not be financing the underlying loan to buy Cedar Falls, Thistle said. That will fall to Bangor Savings Bank.
With that backing, as well as money from the city of Bangor and a community loan fun d, Baldacci hopes that some funding from the Penobscot County commissioners will get the residents to their $8 million target on schedule. The commissioners meet next week.
Residents of the mobile home park are also rallying for private donations from individuals and Bangor-area businesses to get them to the finish line, Pinkham said.
State and local officials are heavily investing in mobile home residents acquiring their parks because it will provide housing stability for low-income homeowners in a tight real estate market that has few options for them.
Cedar Falls also has an additional 81 vacant, developable lots on the park’s 79-acre site, so there’s an especially promising opportunity to invest in affordable housing there. In today’s costly construction climate, Baldacci said $8 million to stabilize more than 200 units of housing is a very good deal.
“We’re going to get significant bang for our buck on this,” he said.
Now that $1 million has been allocated for Cedar Falls, there is $700,000 left in MaineHousing’s mobile home park funding pot, Thistle said. Those funds are unspoken for, but Baldacci said he will be submitting a bill for this upcoming legislative session that would replenish that fund by adding $3.5 million to it.
“I want to see this program continue and to be successful and to be offered to more people,” Baldacci said.
