Unable to afford the upkeep of her home in Poland, Elaine Therriault sold the house in 2018 and bought a mobile home with the profit.
Life has become a lot more affordable since then for the 62-year-old, who supports herself and her grandson with her disability payments. At West Village mobile home park, the 42-lot community in Monmouth she moved to, lot rents are only $300. That’s a rare find among mobile home parks, which have seen sharp increases in lot rents in recent years.
When Therriault learned last November that the aging owners of West Village planned to sell the park to an unknown buyer, she grew concerned. She had heard stories of investor activity in other Maine parks, and she decided to make her park the third to take advantage of a new state law that allows residents to form a co-op and purchase their own communities.
“I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to afford my home. I wouldn’t be able to afford to keep living here with rent increases going $800 and beyond,” Therriault said.
The new law required the owners of West Village, G&G Associates, to give residents a 60-day notice of an impending sale and consider an offer from residents to buy the park. Therriault was put in touch with the Cooperative Development Institute, a Massachusetts-based group that has backed Maine co-ops as they make these purchases and is backing Monmouth, too.
Neither CDI nor the residents know who the interested buyer of West Village is or what their motivations for purchasing the park might be, said Nora Gosselin, who runs the mobile home park acquisition program for the Cooperative Development Institute. The owners could not be reached for comment.
Residents are operating under the assumption that the co-op model would be favorable to a sale to an unknown buyer. A majority indicated they’d like to make an offer to buy the park, and went under contract in early February with a $1.9 million offer.
Now, the group has until mid-May to come up with the funds. It’s near-certain they’ll make that deadline given CDI’s reputation for sealing these kinds of deals at far higher purchase prices. A co-op in Brunswick bought their park for $26.3 million last year, and one in Bangor bought theirs this year for $8 million.
These co-ops usually draw from a capital stack that includes money lent from banks as well as funds from Maine’s housing authority, their municipality and The Genesis Loan Fund. It’s too early to say where the funds for this purchase will come from, but the two previous sales have included millions of dollars from a state fund that Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, is looking to replenish with $3.5 million this legislative session.
The hope for these Monmouth residents is that the purchase will keep lot rents stable and ensure their homes are affordable in perpetuity.
“People live in a trailer park for a reason. The people that live here aren’t rich,” Therriault said. “The rent will be based on the expenses of the park, not somebody making somebody’s wallet grow bigger and bigger.”
