Mobile Home Park Residents Ask Augusta City Council for Rent Stabilization Ordinance
PHOTO: Riverside Park residents in Augusta on Thursday.
The Maine Labor Climate Council (MLCC) and manufactured park residents held a rally Thursday night to call on the Augusta City Council to pass a temporary rent moratorium and a rent stabilization ordinance to prevent massive lot rent increases. At the council meeting, residents of Riverside Park in Augusta described how the Michigan-based company Sun Communities began increasing lot rents and deferring maintenance after it bought their park 2020.
Many of the park residents are young families, veterans and elderly Mainers on fixed incomes who are finding it increasingly difficult to afford living in some of the only affordable housing in the state. The residents own their homes, but the company owns the land beneath them. Izabella Milbury and her mother Deb Milbury, told the council that moving into Riverside saved them from being priced out of Augusta, given skyrocketing apartment rents.
“For the most part, we love living in the park and I love that it provides us the space for me to do my garden and for my nephew to play outside,” said Izabella Milbury. “However, during our time here, rents have increased from $350 to $550. After Sun Communities bought the park in 2020, they began to implement yearly increases in rent. These increases have been justified under the guise that costs are going up, though we've never been told what specific costs are going up.”
Milbury said after Sun bought the park, maintenance and communication declined significantly. Due to high employee turnover, there was a period where there was no one in the manager’s office to talk to. When they called the company’s 1-800 number, the calls either went unanswered or someone on the other line took a message and never got back to them. The company also changed rules in regard to its responsibility to maintain the grounds. Milbury said Sun has made it the residents’ responsibly to cut down tree limbs that are posing a danger to homes and vehicles, despite the fact that the company owns the land and charges rent on it.
“I know people on multiple occasions have been told that trees on our lots are our responsibility and we need to cut them down if there's dangerous tree limbs or if the tree falls completely,” said Milbury. “However, I know other parks in Maine have the general rule that when that residents are responsible for their trailer, the landowners are responsible for problems that happen on the land itself, assuming the issue was not caused by the resident.”
She said the company has also neglected to properly sand the park road, resulting in dangerous driving conditions and making it difficult for people to get up the hill and out of the park. Sun Communities is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that owns interests in 500 manufactured home properties in the United States, Canada, and the UK, including nine in Maine. Sun is one of many out-of-state real estate investment and private equity firms buying up mobile home parks because they have some of the highest financial returns in the industry.
Residents of two Sun Communities properties in Brunswick organized and successfully lobbied their City Council to pass 180-day moratorium on lot rent increases in November. MLCC has been engaging with mobile home park residents across the state to educate them about their rights, fight for rent stabilization ordinances and help them form cooperatives to purchase the land before greedy out-of-state corporations or private equity are able to purchase them. Mobile home park residents in Jay, with the help of the MLCC, also lobbied their selectboard to place a proposed moratorium on further rent hikes before voters at the town meeting in April.
Last year, the Maine Legislature passed a law that gives mobile home residents the right of first refusal to purchase a mobile home park if the owner intends to sell. Another new law directs the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future with developing a model municipal rent stabilization ordinance and compiling other recommendations. A third new law requires mobile home park owners to notify tenants of a rent increase and establishes steps tenants can take to request mediation if a park owner increases the rent above a certain threshold.
Riverside resident Ramona Welton, a union retiree and former MSEA-SEIU 1989 president, said she bought her home from the previous park owner in 1987. Since then, the park changed hands several times and once out-of-state owners purchased the park communication got worse. She said she never received notice of a rent increase last year and continued to pay the same monthly amount until she got an eviction notice for being in arrears. At the time, the park didn’t have a manager, so it was hard to get a hold of someone from the company. She said it was upsetting that she had lived in the same place for nearly 40 years and always paid her bills on time, but then suddenly got an eviction notice without any warning.
“The cost shift is the biggest thing,” said Welton. “We didn't pay for water when I moved in there. We didn't pay for years. Then they broke it out, so we paid for water and we paid for sewer. Then we pay for runoff. Now if we have a pet, we pay for the pet. If we have people that stay more than a few weeks, we pay for guests. We own our homes. They don't own the inside of those homes." She added, "I just want a voice. I want somebody to hear what we're saying. And I don't want my rent to go up $35 to $55 every year.”