Mobile Home Park Residents Fight Private Equity and Fight for Their Homes with Help from Unions
PHOTO: Jay resident JoAn Gray speaks at a press conference on November 24.
When a Florida-based real estate investment company bought the Lambert Street mobile home park in Jay six years ago, resident JoAn Gray, 82, hoped it would be a good landlord. During the six years she lived there, the previous owner had always taken good care of the residents. He lived in the park and always ensured the grounds were kept up and the private road was plowed. He even plowed the driveways of tenants, most of whom are elderly and on fixed incomes. The rent for their land lots was also very affordable. Like many mobile home residents, they own their own homes but lease the land under them.
“Jody and Susan were great landlords. He took such good care of the park,” she said. “But Jody got older and was ready to retire so he sold the park.”
He sold it to New Riverside Farms, LLC, a real estate investment firm owned by Chris and Ben Adrian of Holmes Beach, Florida. The investors, who also bought the Hidden Circle and Pine Haven parks in Jay, immediately jacked up the lot rents and raised them every few years. But they did very little to keep up with park maintenance. A partially dead tree that was struck by lightning a few years ago hangs over one of the homes across the street from Gray. They also failed to mow the common area lawns and plow the private road to the park after a big snow storm.
“The land owners, they do nothing,” resident Tanya Dwyer said at a press conference in late November. “There are a lot of older folks in the community who are wheelchair bound … Some are taking care of young kids who have mental disabilities. Everybody is going through a lot and [the landlords] don’t want to do anything to help.”
When Gray called the property manager to complain that he hadn’t plowed the road, he told her he had fourteen other properties to manage. Gray did not accept that excuse.
“I said, ‘We’ve got eleven inches of snow in the road right now. If an emergency vehicle like an ambulance or fire truck had to get in here and couldn’t get in, you’re going to get a big lawsuit on your hands,’" Gray said. "He said, ‘Well, I’ll get somebody up there to plow it.' Within a half hour, a plow showed up, but you shouldn’t have to [threaten a lawsuit] to get the road plowed.”
Despite the deferred maintenance, the company increased Gray’s lot rent by another $50 in October, raising it to $325 a month.
“I hate to believe this of people, but they just don't care about other people,” she said. “I truly believe the only thing they're interested in is getting their lot rent every month.”
Hidden Circle resident Travis White said it took the park owner 75 days for them to hook his home up to electricity after he moved to the park three years ago. He said management of the park is “absolute shit” and compared the owner to the private equity “bottom feeders” who bought the town's largest employer, the Jay Paper Mill, and "stripped it for parts."
Then one day, Lorri Nandrea, an organizer with the Maine Labor Climate Council (MLCC), knocked on his door and told him about its efforts to organize mobile home park residents so they can purchase the land to stabilize rents and prevent it from being sold off to greedy investors. Coincidentally, White, Gray and the rest of the residents received a notice four days later that New Riverside Farms was planning to sell the parks to another investor in Colorado. They received the notice just days before a new law would take effect that gives mobile home park residents first right of refusal when putting a park on the market.
"They sprung it on us so we couldn’t have first right of refusal, seven days before,” said White. “They knew what they were doing.”
The residents took MLCC up on the offer and began meeting at the Western Maine Labor Council (WMLC) Local 14 Solidarity Center to decide their next steps. With the help of MLCC and the Cooperative Development Institute, Hidden Circle residents were able to form a cooperative and put up a bid to purchase the park. They are still waiting to hear back from the seller about whether it will accept the bid.
About 20 park residents also packed a Jay Select Board meeting and convinced town leaders to place a proposed moratorium on further rent hikes before voters at the town meeting in April. If approved, it would prohibit any rent increases on park lots imposed after Dec. 8 and pause any further increases. Speaking at a press conference before the meeting, WMLC President Linda Deane (USW 900/MEA) warned that if out-of-state speculators continue their rate hikes, Jay will lose “its elders, its volunteers, its workers, and its history.” Nandrea said it was inspiring to see the passion and determination of the park residents.
“I think it's impressive how the communities have come together and advocated not only for themselves, but for their neighbors,” she said. “And I think it's just a really great example of the power of people when they unite together and pursue a common goal.”
Private Equity Vultures Buying Up Everything
As the cost of housing has soared in recent years, private equity firms and other corporate investors have been buying up mobile home parks, which are some of the last affordable housing options left. Between 2017 and 2019, only 13 percent of buyers of mobile home parks were these kinds of large institutional investors, but by 2020-2021 they represented 23 percent of buyers. That's because turning affordable housing into money printing machines is a very lucrative business. A report commissioned by the Maine Community Foundation noted that investments in mobile home parks brought in the highest financial returns among all real estate classes including offices, parking, industrial, commercial and residential. Currently, more than one-fifth of Maine's mobile home parks are owned by out-of-state companies. It's a symptom of what is happening across our economy as predatory investors buy up health care facilities, nursing homes, schools, the infrastructure needed for volunteer fire departmentsand even youth sports to hollow them out and squeeze out every last bit of money.
MLCC came up with the idea to start organizing mobile home park residents after canvassing parks as part of the Maine's AFL-CIO's 2024 election canvass program. Mobile home residents across Maine told canvassers the same stories about out-of-state investors buying up parks, deferring maintenance and raising rents. After President Donald Trump pulled the plug on offshore wind projects, the organization put its organizing work on offshore wind on the back burner. In learning about the struggles of mobile home park residents in paying their bills, they also saw an opportunity to help them reduce their heating costs and put laid off union members to work installing them.
The state-administered Efficiency Maine program will cover 85 percent of the cost of heating efficiency upgrades for manufactured homes in resident-owned parks. The MLCC is working with residents of the 13 cooperatively-owned mobile parks in the state to connect them to union contractors who can make heating efficiency upgrades like weatherization work and installing heat pumps.
“There’s the opportunity to help connect people with more efficient, cheaper sources of heating while also helping them to organize to improve their material conditions.” said MLCC Organizing Director Joe Hupperich.
MLCC is currently organizing in manufactured home parks across the state and holding meetings in Searsport, Augusta and Bowdoin. The park in Bowdoin, Mountain View Estates, is owned by Philips International, which is the target of a US Senate investigation over its business practices and profits. MLCC is also planning a solidarity action with mobile home park residents to ask the Augusta City Council to support a temporary rent moratorium and to draft a rent stabilization ordinance at its meeting on Jan. 14, 6:30 p.m. If you’d like to come show your support, RSVP here.
Gray said she is very grateful to the MLCC and union organizers who have supported Jay residents in standing up for themselves. She has an idea of how Maine can send a message to greedy private equity investors.
“Down to Kittery, when you come into Maine, there's a big sign that says, ‘The way life should be,’” she said. “I'd like to see them add one more sentence to that that says, ‘The State of Maine is not for sale!”