Maine moves to strengthen mobile home park oversight

Maine is in the process of adjusting how it regulates the manufactured housing industry and helps support residents of mobile home parks. The changes come as a growing number of communities across the state have been purchased by out-of-state investors and follow a report that found deficiencies in the state’s ability to respond to complaints.

The Maine Manufactured Housing Board, which has been responsible for upholding mobile home park community standards and manufacturing quality for almost 50 years, had its last meeting in early June and was dissolved on July 29. Its four-person staff has been moved out of the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation and placed under the relatively new Maine Office of Community Affairs, where it will continue investigating violations of state rules.

While the new regulatory structure has yet to be fully defined, issues related to manufactured housing and the 480 mobile home parks registered with the state will be handled administratively within the office, rather than by an adjudicatory board that includes people in the manufactured housing industry. Mobile home residents and housing advocates are hopeful the move will create a more efficient way to address challenges related to mobile homes, seen as one of the last affordable housing options in the state. But some who work in manufactured housing worry that cutting the board from the regulatory structure will mean losing industry knowledge.

The board was established to ensure manufactured homes, better known as mobile homes, were safe and sanitary. It was responsible for setting and enforcing standards for construction and installation; overseeing licensing for housing manufacturers and mobile home parks; regulating warranties; investigating complaints; and inspecting parks for compliance with electrical, cleanliness and lot standards.

The nine-person board, appointed by the governor, was required by statute to include three members of the public, including a mobile home park resident, two manufactured home dealers, a mobile home park owner and a home builder, along with a professional engineer and a code enforcement officer. Staff consisted of an executive director, two housing inspectors and a secretary.

A report from the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future published last December found its oversight lacking, and manufactured home owners confused about where to turn for help with different issues. Mobile home park residents described a “systemic lack of support from state government in addressing some of the more common problems that arise at mobile home parks, such as poor or dangerous living conditions, unlawful or untenable community rules and fees, and enforcement of state laws meant to protect residents from predatory purchasers of parks.”

The report described a “pattern of circular referrals” that “often leaves park residents feeling isolated and unheard,” and said there appeared to be “gaps and deficiencies” in the state’s oversight of mobile home parks.

Lawmakers responded by passing a budget that moved the housing board’s employees under the Office of Community Affairs. While the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation is primarily tasked with overseeing professional licensing, the Office of Community Affairs was created in 2024 to provide planning, technical assistance and financial support to municipalities, tribal governments and regional planning groups.

The Office of Community Affairs is better suited to help mobile home park residents because of its focus on centralizing resources and coordinating between different agencies, said its director, Samantha Horn.

“For a community, a problem might look like a single problem, but when viewed from the state side, it actually looks like seven different things that apply to different agencies,” Horn said.

The office will add two new positions — a training and certification coordinator and a technical outreach assistant — and is planning to incorporate modular housing standards into its training program for code enforcement officers, Horn said.

The attorney general’s office, which handles landlord-tenant disputes and consumer protection claims, is also bolstering its ability to work on issues related to manufactured housing. It is adding an attorney, funded by a temporary increase in mobile home park registration fees, whose focus will be on issues brought by mobile home park residents.

Some aspects of the transition and new regulatory structure are still being worked out. Lawmakers instructed the Office of Community Affairs to consult with mobile home park residents, former members of the board and others as they hash out the details of the transition, and to submit recommendations to the Legislature by January 1.

‘Nothing was happening’

State Rep. Cheryl Golek, D-Harpswell, said problems with the state’s regulatory structure became apparent when she began working on a bill last year to govern rent increases for mobile home park lots. While mobile home owners often own their homes, they typically do not own the land the houses sit on, leaving them vulnerable to rent hikes. Golek’s district includes the Bay Bridge Estates community in Brunswick, which has drawn attention for water issues and where residents just voted to limit rent increases.

Golek said she heard from residents across the state about sewers backing up, lots flooding, and water being shut off. While these issues were not the responsibility of the Manufactured Housing Board, Golek said the board was rarely helpful in redirecting concerns to the appropriate agencies.

For issues within their purview, Golek said the board rarely acted. “There’s been hardly any fines, hardly any follow-up on issues, and no one has lost their licenses,” she said. “Nothing was happening over there.”

Theresa Desfossess, the last chair of the board and the president of State Manufactured Homes Inc., said the board was active but was limited in dealing with many mobile home park issues because it was not authorized to handle tenant-landlord disputes.

The board tried to help people if their complaints were not within their purview by referring them elsewhere, but those complaints did not always reach them, Desfossess said. She disagreed with dissolving the board, and said she wished the Legislature had considered expanding its powers before getting rid of it altogether.

“(The state) does not have the perspective that we in the industry have,” she said.

Of the 118 enforcement actions the manufactured housing board took in the past decade, 64 have dealt with park owners, according to licensing department data. Only nine percent of those resulted in decisions and orders, which involved a hearing before the board; the rest were consent orders, where a park owner agreed to remediation or a fine.

Park owners can face civil fines of up to $5,000 for violating community health and safety standards under the Maine Manufactured Housing Act; they are given 90 days to correct a violation. Manufacturers who do not disclose defects in a home or issue false certifications can face stricter penalties of up to $1 million.

The cases that resulted in decisions from the board dealt with issues around licensing, unpaid fines from prior violations and other problems. Only one case resulted in a fine above $250.

In that 2016 case, involving the now-defunct Birchtree Meadows Mobile Home Park in Hancock, the park owner was fined $4,500 after being found to have not corrected numerous electrical, safety and nuisance violations, including unprotected electrical cables.

The maximum fine for mobile home park owners who violate health and safety standards is “couch money,” said Marieke Giasson, a tenant organizer who lives at Bay Bridge Estates and participated in the working group that produced the state report.

She said the three months given to park owners to fix problems meant residents often had to wait months before problems would be resolved. Giasson said she is hopeful the new structure will create ways for them to get help faster, but said there is “no one solution” to fixing the challenges facing mobile home park residents.

Some with ties to the manufactured housing industry are not so keen about the changes.

State Sen. Dick Bradstreet, R-Vassalboro, a former manufactured home seller and housing board member who served on the Maine Legislature’s Committee on Housing and Economic Development, said most of residents’ trouble came from expecting help where the housing board was unable to provide it.

“They were limited in what they could do legally in terms of things like lot rent and contractual obligations,” he said. “If a person has a legal situation and their lease is not right, it’s not up to the board to judge the lease agreement; that’s up to the courts.”

Bradstreet said he thought some good would come from the regulatory change but worried it would also lead to a loss of institutional knowledge.

Julie Ann Smith, the executive director of the Maine Manufactured Housing Association, a non-profit trade association that advocates for manufactured housing parks, echoed this concern about representation. She said members of the industry are concerned a state agency is less likely to give them the grace the board might have given them because of their knowledge of how park management works.

She said many people who complained about the former board did not understand its governance structure and its authority.

“We were, I think, incredibly disappointed that people who have invested years, decades, entire lifetimes in the manufactured housing industry — who were serving on this board and who were working to hold accountable community owners, manufacturers, industry professionals — that they were basically discounted,” Smith said.

Others are more uncertain. Sanford-based modular home builder Canbury Homes director Rick Bibber said he was concerned that the change was made without lawmakers hashing out exactly what the new regulatory format would look like first and did not know why it was made.

He said his industry was comfortable with the board format and hoped regulators would keep the lines of communication open as the new process develops.

“There are just more questions than answers at this point,” he said.

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This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.