Residents of an Arundel mobile home community are forming a co-op as they explore efforts to protect themselves from rising rents that they fear could price them out.
Some Shady Oaks Mobile Home park residents are also hopeful that the town Select Board’s ongoing discussions about rent stabilization could help them stay in their homes.
In recent months, residents have started to form a co-op, which would essentially give them right of first refusal should the park go up for sale. That means residents would be the first in line to possibly buy and own the park themselves — a solution that mobile home owners in other Maine towns have resorted to amid a trend of out-of-state investors buying locally owned parks and jacking up the rent.
Dan Neumann, a field organizer for the Maine Labor Climate Council who has been assisting the residents in their efforts, said neighbors have been working together since last year to ensure everyone at the park is being treated fairly and that no one is priced out of their lot.
“We’re just trying to come up with something that protects the future affordability of these parks as well,” Neumann said. “That’s our main concern, is we know that these parks have become a target of investment firms, but particularly private equity. We’re just really trying to impress upon the Select Board that this is not normal business operations.”
Neumann was referring to Onyx Capital, the private equity group based out of El Segundo, California that owns Shady Oaks.
As residents continue their co-op efforts, the Arundel Select Board has begun to lay out plans and discuss language for a rent stabilization ordinance at mobile home parks that could go before voters this year.
The ordinance, based off a model composed by the state, seeks to protect residents who own their mobile homes — but rent the land beneath them — from any “unnecessary, excessive cost increase” and to protect unsubsidized affordable housing.
As written, the ordinance would limit park owners to raising rent only once per year, establish a formula for calculating increases and require at least 90 days’ notice of any increase.
Shady Oaks residents have pressed the Select Board on some of the drafted language, which they said could open a loophole that would allow the park’s owner to evict residents in order to raise the rent on the newly vacant lot.
At its March 23 meeting, the Select Board said it would add language that limits the amount that rent on an empty lot may be raised to 10%.
Shady Oaks resident Jennifer Moreau said residents were hoping for more explicit restrictions on rent increases but were glad that the eviction safeguard would be added.
“I think that’s the best we can do with this Select Board,” Moreau said, noting that board members are trying to balance what’s fair for both residents and the park owner.
“ We’ve got to compromise,” she said. “Everybody’s got to compromise.”
Shady Oaks residents had asked the Select Board late last year for a moratorium on mobile home lot rent hikes after the park owner informed them of increases of up to $130 more a month. But the board said its hands were tied.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of action that this board could take on its own, simply because the statute doesn’t exist for an emergency moratorium,” Town Manager Keith Trefethen said at a Nov. 10 Select Board meeting.
The ordinance, which the Select Board is set to discuss again Monday, is expected to go before Arundel voters in the June election.
