Residents buy Bangor mobile home park for $8M, plan new homes

Photo / Courtesy Genesis Community Loan Fund Cedar Falls residents celebrate the closing of their purchase of the 79-acre park where they have their manufactured homes.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Residents of Cedar Falls Mobile Home Park formed a cooperative and last week signed an $8 million deal to buy the 79 acres where they’ve lived in manufactured homes for over a decade.

The deal preserves the nearly 130 homes that the residents already owned.

The coop plans to install dozens of new homes, according to a news release.

Residents worked on the deal with the Cooperative Development Institute, a Massachusetts nonprofit focused on cooperative development; the Genesis Community Loan Fund, a nonprofit community development financial institution in Brunswick; and other financing partners.

“This is a model for how lenders, public partners and community organizations can collaborate to mobilize resources and make resident ownership a reality for those who live in mobile home communities,” said Liza Fleming-Ives, executive director of the Genesis Community Loan Fund.

The deal was made possible by Bangor Savings Bank; Genesis Community Loan Fund, with investment by the John T. Gorman Foundation; MaineHousing; Cooperative Fund of the Northeast; Four Directions Development Corp; and the city of Bangor, which accessed federal Community Development Block Grant funding.

Land deal

Cedar Falls, at 666 Finson Road on the northern end of Bangor, was built in 1987 by a family and was sold to a New Hampshire-based apartment management firm in the early 2000s. It is home to families and seniors; many have lived there for more than a decade.

Photo / Courtesy Genesis Community Loan Fund

Cedar Falls Mobile Home Park has nearly 130 homes and 28 empty lots with sewer, water and electric hookups.

Before the purchase, they owned their manufactured homes, but not the land underneath, which made residents vulnerable to lot rent hikes and possible displacement.

Last summer, the residents were notified by the owner of the park that the land was going up for sale and that an outside buyer had submitted a bid.

Residents sought the help of the Cooperative Development Institute, which helped the residents organize to form the Cedar Falls Residents Cooperative and outbid the outside offer to purchase the park themselves.

The transaction was made possible by a state law known as “Opportunity to Purchase,” which requires owners of manufactured home communities to notify residents when their park goes up for sale.

“We have an older community, and they were worried that if a developer came in, their community would go away,” said Alvin MacNevin, treasurer of the Cedar Falls volunteer board of directors. “We sat down with residents for one or two hours at a time helping to educate them about the process we were planning to go through and the result that could come out on the other end.

“The residents were fully on board after that, but it took us sitting in their living room, talking to them and convincing them that it was possible.”

Previous deal

Since the law went into effect in October 2023, Cedar Falls is the second manufactured home community to become resident-owned.

The first such deal occurred last October, when residents of Linnhaven Mobile Home Park in Brunswick learned the land there, which had 278 homes, was going up for sale. They formed the Blueberry Fields Cooperative, also with the Cooperative Development Institute’s help, and negotiated a purchase price with the private owners for $26.3 million.

Under the law passed in 2023, LD 1931/HP 1239, residents have 90 days after an owner’s notice to secure the funds to purchase the community.

MaineHousing created a Mobile Home Community Preservation Fund that Gov. Janet Mills and the Maine Legislature approved in the state budget.

The Maine Legislature created the Mobile Home Park Preservation Fund to help leverage support from private lenders, community banks and municipalities, and also to stabilize costs for residents. It has now helped make nearly 500 affordable homes possible. Mills has proposed a $3 million allocation to the fund in the biennial budget proposal the Legislature is considering.

Adding units

MaineHousing said it would provide a $3 million loan to help develop the community’s 28 empty lots, which already have existing sewer, water and electric hookups.

Bangor Housing, a quasi-governmental agency that provides apartments for low-income residents, will work with residents to repair the empty lots and install new manufactured homes.

Bangor Housing said it hopes the new homes will be an opportunity for graduates of its Family Self-Sufficiency Program to become first-time homebuyers.

The new Cedar Falls units will be open to anyone and could be attractive to residents who live in Bangor Housing’s largest housing development of 500 units across the street from Cedar Falls and who are ready to become homeowners

“We have residents who are ready to take that next step to become homeowners but there’s nowhere to move to,” said Mike Myatt, executive director of Bangor Housing. “There are no homes to buy. With this development project, our residents will be able to move right across the street, where they can continue to have access to our services, their kids can continue to go to the same school, and they can stay close to their network of friends.”

For the last two years, the Bangor City Council has identified housing as one of its priorities, noted Cara Pelletier, the council’s chair.

Maine has 476 manufactured home communities, home to some 20,000 residents who are vulnerable to ownership changes that can bring substantial rent hikes.

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