BRUNSWICK, Maine — Residents of Linnhaven Mobile Home Center celebrated their purchase of the nearly 300-home park with Gov. Janet Mills and other state leaders on Tuesday.
The group of neighbors bought the park earlier this month after pooling together $26.3 million in loans and government grants. The community will now be called Blueberry Fields Cooperative—the eleventh such co-op in Maine.
At Blueberry Fields, the push to buy came amidst fears that an out-of-state corporation would purchase the park. While residents of mobile home parks often own their own homes, they pay a fee—known as lot rent—for the land they live on.
“We just had a fear that if we didn’t try to buy it, an outside company would come in and really raise the rents on us,” Melissa McCarthy, a co-op board member and park resident, said Tuesday.
That fear has come to pass for many mobile home parks across the country and in Maine. Residents at Mountain View Estates mobile home park in Bowdoin told NEWS CENTER Maine in August that lot rents had become excessive after the park was purchased by a corporate buyer. In Brunswick, neighbors didn’t want to take the risk.
“A community like this to an investor-owner—a Wall Street company—is a gold mine,” Nora Gosselin with the Cooperative Development Institute explained. “They see it as people are on their balance sheet—‘We can charge them whatever.'”
The resident purchase of Linnhaven is notable for another key reason: It’s likely the first cooperative since a Maine law took effect last year requiring mobile home park owners give 60 days’ notice to residents of their intent to sell. The goal is to provide enough time for the mobile home owners to mobilize and make an offer to buy, if they choose.
Now, Blueberry Fields Cooperative is in the hands of those who live there. They plan to run it with a guiding principle: keep costs low.
As McCarthy puts it, “[We’ll] only raise rents as necessary and try to keep it as affordable as possible.”