Tim Nangle: Giving Residents a Fair Shot at Owning Their Communities

By Senator Tim Nangle

In the 1950s, my father bought a mobile home park in Danvers, Massachusetts. He didn’t do it to get rich; he did it to build a life and a community. For decades, he kept that park running with a simple philosophy: treat people fairly. He fixed things himself, unclogging toilets and crawling under trailers on cold winter days. Sometimes he worked throughout the night to wrap heat tape around frozen pipes. If a tenant was late on rent, he worked with them. He took care of his tenants, and they appreciated that. When my father passed away, my siblings and I took over running the park and we did our best to carry my father’s approach forward.

State Senator Tim Nangle

A few years ago, everything changed. We started getting unsolicited offers from private equity firms with deep pockets and little interest in the people who lived in the park. Their goal was simple — buy the park, raise rent and extract as much profit as possible.

Thankfully, Massachusetts has a strong law on its books that gives residents the right to match an outside offer and buy the park themselves. That law gave our residents a fighting chance and they took it. They organized, secured financing and made a competitive offer. Today, they own the park and it’s thriving under their ownership.

Their story could have ended very differently, though. And here in Maine, it too often does. That’s why I’ve introduced LD 1145, "An Act to Protect Residents Living in Mobile Home Parks."

Mobile home parks are some of our last truly affordable housing options in Maine. But in recent years, they’ve become a favorite target of out-of-state investors looking to make a quick profit. These firms often raise rents, enforce strict eviction policies and skimp on maintenance. And because our current laws don’t do enough to protect residents, their actions can go unchecked.

LD 1145 strengthens protections for park residents by:

● Requiring park owners to notify residents when they plan to sell.

● Giving residents 90 days to organize and make a purchase offer.

● Creating a clear right of first refusal so they can match any outside offer.

● Ensuring that if a park is being shut down or redeveloped, residents get 90 days' notice and help relocating, paid for by the park owner.

We’ve already seen signs that Mainers are ready and willing to step up. During the public hearing on this bill, Nora Gosselin from the Cooperative Development Institute shared that under Maine’s current statute, residents in nine different communities have already organized and submitted competitive purchase offers — sometimes offering more than what corporate buyers had on the table. But six of those offers were rejected. As Nora put it, “The law needs to be strengthened into a Right of First Refusal to build upon an effective model, in an environment with so many aggressive, deep-pocketed, out-of-state corporations, amid an affordable housing crisis."

LD 1145 isn’t radical. It’s fair. It’s practical. And it’s proven. This bill gives residents the chance to hold on to the homes and communities they’ve built not just for now, but for generations to come.

The bill is currently being considered by the Legislature’s Housing and Economic Development Committee. If you agree that Mainers deserve a fair shot at owning their communities, I urge you to contact the committee and your local legislators. Let them know that you support LD 1145.

You can contact all members of the Housing and Economic Development Committee by sending an email to HED@legislature.maine.gov. To find your representative, visit legislature.maine.gov/house/. <

The opinions in this column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of The Windham Eagle newspaper ownership or its staff.