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Across the midcoast, developers are trying to get a variety of new homes, condos and apartments built to address the region’s housing shortage.
Another project is now in the permitting stages in the Knox County town of Warren. But it would look different from other developments that are underway in the region. Rather than constructing homes from the ground up, a developer is instead trying to build a new mobile home park, with 22 lots that would be rented out to residents.
Residents will have a chance to learn more about the project at a public hearing on Feb. 27, which one local official said he expects to be well-attended. The project is being developed by a locally owned company called Falcon Land Co. LLC.
While Maine has a number of mobile home parks, few new ones have been proposed in recent years even as the state — and particularly communities along the coast — have taken broader steps to address a critical housing shortage that has made living unaffordable for many residents.
When mobile home parks have gotten recent public attention, it has more often been because their residents are trying to buy out existing ones or out-of-state landlords have hiked their rents.
But there is a growing movement to develop more mobile and modular housing in Maine Despite the negative perception some people may have of them, advocates say they can help alleviate the housing crisis while providing better living standards and cheaper rates than similar developments. Modular homes can cost 20 percent less than a similar stick-built house.
Further up the coast, in the fishing community of Stonington, officials have considered putting a mobile home park on town-owned land as a way to create more housing.
If the project is ultimately approved in Warren, the private developers would pave Falcon Lane, which is currently a dirt road that serves a 35-acre lot, according to the subdivision application.
There is little publicly available information about Falcon Land Co., which has a physical address in Warren and is represented by an attorney in Damariscotta, according to corporate filings.
According to Warren’s town planner, Dan DeBord, the company’s owners are local. He declined to provide additional details regarding their identities, saying that the company submitted the application, not individuals.
The attorney for the developer did not respond to a request for comment.
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.
