In Maine, more than 45,000 people live in nearly 500 mobile home communities across the state — a number greater than the population of any city in the state except Portland. These communities have long offered affordable homes and stability. On a sunny day, you’ll see neighbors out walking their dogs, parents pushing baby strollers, retirees meeting on porches and kids riding bikes.

Community members are proud to own their homes, but they typically don’t own the land underneath them. And that’s the primary reason the affordability of their homes is under threat like never before.

As more and more Maine mobile home parks are listed for sale, too often the buyers aren’t local operators or mission-minded developers. They’re out-of-state private equity firms and real estate investment trusts that extract maximum profit by raising lot rents substantially, adding new fees and deferring maintenance.

Residents lose stability and financial equity — and sometimes their homes and neighbors.

Yet it doesn’t have to be this way.

Our two organizations have worked together for more than 10 years, making resident ownership of mobile home parks a reality in Maine. Genesis Community Loan Fund provides and brings together financing to help residents purchase the land beneath their homes. The Cooperative Development Institute’s New England Resident-Owned Communities program organizes and trains residents to become cooperative owners and stewards of their communities.

Together, we’ve helped residents buy 12 mobile home parks in Maine, preserving nearly 1,000 homes.

But for every success, there are more communities being lost.

Since fall 2023, over half of the 2,600 mobile home lots listed for sale in Maine have been sold to or have contracts pending with corporate investors. And once a private equity firm or real estate investment trust replaces a mom-and-pop operator, a community rarely returns to local ownership.

We’re grateful that in 2023 Maine lawmakers passed the Opportunity to Purchase law and created the Mobile Home Park Preservation Fund, tools that have helped preserve over 400 homes.

But the scale of the challenge is growing, and it’s time to go further. Maine is losing one of the only forms of housing that is naturally affordable without public subsidy. And that loss is accelerating.

During this legislative session, Maine lawmakers have taken meaningful steps to develop policies that reflect the urgency of the moment. They have a historic opportunity to preserve affordable housing where it already exists — and ensure that Mainers, not out-of-state investors, control the future of their homes and communities.

We encourage legislators to pass three bills that received bipartisan support when vetted in committee, and are now awaiting votes in the House and Senate:

• LD 554 offers a meaningful tax incentive for park owners to sell to residents — deducting up to $750,000 from capital gains.

• LD 1016 creates disincentives for large investor acquisitions. It imposes a per-lot fee to large investor buyers while exempting resident cooperatives and the small businesses that have been buying and selling mobile home parks for decades in Maine. The fees create a preservation fund that helps resident groups compete.

• LD 1145 helps protect residents by giving them the right of first refusal when communities are put up for sale. The right to purchase their communities when that’s possible means they don’t lose their homes without notice or recourse and ensures that sellers receive fair market value for their property.

Together, these bills offer a framework for greater protection of mobile home communities. Passing them into law supports local, resident ownership that keeps housing affordable.

The stakes are real. Thousands of Maine residents — individuals and families of all ages — risk losing the stability of home. Lawmakers can ensure that Maine communities aren’t left vulnerable to national investment trends that put profit ahead of people.