When Celeste Yakawonis was younger, she thought she would spend the rest of her life in her riverfront home on six acres of land in Turner.

But that was before Yakawonis’s husband died, leaving her to live in the large farmhouse alone. 

“Can you see how big that was, for me, one person rattling around?” she said, pointing to a framed photo of the home powdered with snow. “I just couldn’t take care of it.”

Without her husband, Yakawonis said she felt overwhelmed and isolated. But she was advised not to make big decisions too soon after the loss. She kept the home for a year before deciding to sell it. When she started house hunting in 2023, she had trouble finding anything in her budget. 

Eventually, she chose an open-concept mobile home at Linnhaven Mobile Home Park in Brunswick. She purchased the home for $92,000, and paid $480 a month to rent the lot it sat on.

From the outside, it looks like any other double-wide, with a grey paneled exterior and a front porch. Inside, she has made it her own: her daughter draped ferns, pinecones, cranberries and warm white Christmas lights over the sleek white cupboards. 

What changed her life more than the new home was the new community. 

In 2024, after the owner announced that he was intending to sell the property, residents began working with the Cooperative Development Institute to learn more about purchasing the park themselves and becoming a resident-owned community. They created a resident board of directors and pooled together funds to submit a $27 million offer. It was accepted, making them the new owners of the park.

The co-op is now the largest of its kind in the state, with 278 homes. Twelve such resident-owned communities in the state have successfully purchased their manufactured home properties over the last fifteen years, from Arundel to Veazie, according to data provided by the Cooperative Development Institute, which has assisted with some of the deals. 

As Maine grapples with a housing affordability crisis, advocates say these cooperatives offer lower-income residents more stability. State lawmakers are discussing a bill that would encourage the creation of resident-owned communities by providing tax incentives to businesses that sell to cooperatives. 

The bill would provide a tax deduction of up to $750,000 on capital gains for owners who sell to cooperatives. The goal, according to bill sponsor Sen. Cameron Reny (D-Lincoln), is to preserve Maine’s affordable housing units. 

“Mobile homes and manufactured housing parks are some of the last truly affordable housing options in our state,” she said during a work session on the bill earlier this month.

Maine’s housing crunch

The legislation fits into a broader effort to address the state’s housing shortfalls, following a law passed in 2023 that required mobile home park owners to notify residents of their intent to sell and give them an opportunity to purchase the property. 

In mobile home parks, owners typically own their units but rent the land, making them susceptible to unexpected rent hikes and fees when new buyers come in. These communities are often home to seniors who live on fixed incomes and are particularly vulnerable to rent changes.

Nationwide, investors have taken a keen interest in mobile home parks. In 2020 and 2021, private equity firms and other investors were behind nearly a quarter of all manufactured home purchases in the country, according to a report by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project and Manufactured Housing Action. 

In Maine, many mobile home parks are owned and operated by families — but as some are aging out of the business, they are choosing to sell. As of last year, out-of-state investors owned more than a fifth of Maine’s mobile home parks, according to the Bangor Daily News. 

After such purchases take place, residents across the country have reported seeing their rents go up by as much as 60 percent, according to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. They have also seen ballooning maintenance issues, unexpected fees and even water shutoffs. 

In 2021, Philips International bought Mountain View Estates Mobile Home Park in Bowdoin. By the spring of 2024, according to News Center Maine, the lot rent had increased four times, pushing residents’ bills up by nearly $200 a month.

Negotiating a deal

While the 2023 law has made it easier for groups like the Blueberry Fields Cooperative to purchase their mobile home parks, sellers are still wary of selling to cooperatives, which are typically newly formed and often don’t have the kind of longstanding reputation that an investor might, said Nora Gosselin with the Cooperative Development Institute. 

“You have a group of residents who are forming a co-op who are stepping into the negotiating room with a large Wall Street company and a local family, and it’s just — it’s challenging,” Gosselin said.

While sellers might still choose other buyers, the tax incentive in the proposed legislation could give residents a leg up without forcing them to pay more during the negotiation, she said. 

The Genesis Fund, a community lender, has funded every resident-owned manufactured community in the state, according to the group’s executive director, Liza Fleming-Ives. She said they combine their resources with other lenders and provide a framework to groups interested in financing the projects. 

“The demand for our role is huge right now,” she said. “We are very aware — and very focused — on the need that we have in the state to build our new supply of affordable housing.”

A 2023 report by the Maine Housing Authority found that the state needs to build approximately 84,000 new homes by 2030 to meet its expected population growth and account for historic underproduction. 

Manufactured homes are a key part of the solution to the housing crisis because they provide permanent, lower-cost options for residents in different income brackets through housing that’s already readily available, said Erik Jorgensen, director of government relations at MaineHousing. The agency helped fund the Blueberry Fields Cooperative’s purchase in Brunswick, along with the recent purchase of the Cedar Falls Mobile Home Park in Bangor, through the state’s mobile home park preservation fund.

“What’s different about a co-op is that future cost increases are in the hands of a board of residents and not dictated by investors,” Jorgensen said during the work session. “The question really does become, how do you motivate sellers to choose the option with greater public purpose?”

Yet not everyone supports the push to create more resident-owned communities. 

The CEO of the Manufactured Housing Institute, Lesli Gooch, said she feels that the incentives in the proposed legislation could have unintended consequences in the long run. 

She said there are real benefits that come from having an experienced property manager, rather than residents, run a mobile home park, noting that residents might not be as well positioned to support upgrades to water, electricity and waste management. 

“Some people call (mobile home parks) a postage stamp plot of land that the house sits on. That’s absolutely not true,” Gooch said. “It does take someone who understands infrastructure to make sure that these communities are preserved over time.”

To Yakawonis, who moved to the Brunswick mobile home park after her husband died, the advantages of the new resident ownership structure are clear: stable lot rent prices, leadership opportunities and a strong sense of community. As a board member, she’s become involved in everything from park maintenance to updating the park rules, keeping residents informed and even a game night. 

The biggest change is a sense of stability — unlike in other mobile home parks.

“If their rent goes up, their rent goes up, and there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s just a horrible powerless feeling and we did not want that,” Yakawonis said. “We wanted to be in control of our destiny.”

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.