Manufactured Home Park Organizing in Maine
Between utility bill hikes and skyrocketing grocery prices, rising costs are causing a squeeze on working families. For mobile home park residents, corporate park owners are making it even worse. Private equity firms are buying up mobile home parks with the intent to squeeze every penny possible out of their residents, and evict those who can’t pay up. That’s why residents are fighting to take back decision-making power over their own homes. By using union organizing tactics, residents are coming together to push for ordinances at the local level, form tenants organizations, and sometimes to collectively purchase ownership of their mobile home park communities.
Everyone should have a say in decisions impacting their home.
Mobile home residents across Maine are taking back decision-making power over their own homes. Instead of relying on outside corporations to make decisions without any accountability, residents can work together to improve living conditions for themselves and their neighbors.
Everyone deserves to live somewhere safe and secure.
Outside corporations’ mismanagement of mobile home park communities puts people at risk by neglecting living conditions while continuing to raise prices.
We can’t depend on outside corporations to protect our communities with safe and secure living conditions and keep our homes affordable, but we can depend on each other. By coming together and organizing with our community, we can take back some local control over our homes and work to ensure better living conditions for all of our neighbors.
Mobile home park residents are working together to address the affordability crisis.
Rising costs are impacting working Mainers across the board. For mobile home park residents, outside corporations and private equity firms are making it worse – by raising lot fees/rent as they please with little to no accountability. Between rising utility bills and un-checked lot fee increases, some residents are barely skimping by. By coming together to organize our communities, we residents are working to make living in mobile homes more affordable by fighting rent increases and pushing back on outside corporations.
“Residents get the bill when park-owned trees fall on their properties. Folks can’t access their rental contracts. The mailroom’s a dump. An outdated bridge had its weight limit sign removed. Water gets shut off without notice. Now, many residents tell me they’re afraid to speak out for fear of eviction. This stuff has to end. As governor, I’ll rein in private equity’s runaway greed and invest in safe, quality public housing for Mainers.”
Are you a mobile home park resident in Maine interested in organizing your park? Click the button below to fill out our intake form and we’ll be in touch.
“Some residents have had to get second jobs to pay their bills. We have veterans. We have people who are disabled or on fixed incomes or who have worked all their lives and are grateful to be retired, but now they have to think about getting a second job. We are not living beyond our means. We are simply just trying to make ends meet.”
For more information about this campaign, please contact MLCC Director of Organizing Joe Hupperich at joe@mainelaborclimate.org.