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Residents of a Hancock mobile home park say their property’s out-of-state, multinational corporate owners are steadily pricing them out of a once-affordable community.
The publicly traded corporation Sun Communities, which markets itself as one of the world’s largest real estate investment trusts, acquired Hancock Heights Mobile Home Park — a 113-site property about 10 minutes east of Ellsworth on Route 1 — about five years ago.
Since then, residents say the corporation has raised rents excessively and neglected the park’s maintenance, creating water and sewage problems that compound the financial strain on residents, many of whom live on fixed incomes.
The park joins a growing number of Maine mobile home communities that are fighting rent increases under new out-of-state corporate ownership.
Twenty of Maine’s 32 largest mobile home parks — which now consist of more than a third of the state’s mobile homes — are owned by corporate investors, according to a report by the Genesis Community Loan Foundation.
In some parks, residents have formed cooperatives to purchase their parks outright, bypassing corporate buyers.
Hancock residents, of which there are roughly 2,500, will vote June 17 on a 180-day cap on lot rent increases, after mobile home park residents pressured the select board to intervene.
If the temporary cap is passed by a voters at the special town meeting, town officials will then design a permanent ordinance to tie annual lot rent hikes to inflation. The ordinance would later go before Hancock voters for final approval.
Hancock Heights residents, many of whom are dependent on a fixed Social Security income, say their rent increases have been between $25 and $61 annually.
The average monthly Social Security benefit was $1,932 in April 2026, though the amount varies by benefit type, according to the Social Security Administration’s monthly analysis.
A 54-year park resident, who did not want to be identified because of the ongoing dispute, said the rent hikes require her to forego other expenses to adjust for a higher rent payment.
She estimated that around half of her neighbors – like her — rely on social security checks that don’t accommodate rising rent.
The resident, who has lived at Hancock Heights for more than five decades and watched a series of owners come and go, said rent climbed dramatically and amenities deteriorated when Sun Communities acquired the property.
The community had experienced water pressure problems before, but they were typically resolved within days under prior ownership, she said. Since Sun Communities took over, residents say the issues have become chronic — at one point lasting six weeks over the winter holidays.
“I guess they’re treating us like trailer trash, and most of us aren’t,” another resident who asked not to be identified said. “We’re educated — we’re not wealthy — but we paid our time. We’ve done our work, and we just want a happy place to live until we die and not have to be worrying about if every other day we can still afford to be here. Where will we go if we can’t?”
Sun Communities, which owns about 515 communities across North America and the United Kingdom, did not respond to inquiries from the Bangor Daily News.
The Hancock Heights resident said moving a mobile home — which most residents own — can cost upwards of $10,000, leaving most with few options. Her monthly lot rent has jumped $116 in under four years.
“A lot of us fear that we’re not going to have a roof over our heads because we can’t keep affording these rent increases,” the resident added.
She also noted that rent hikes are applied on each resident’s move-in anniversary, so increases are staggered throughout the year. Maine law allows tenants to appeal a rent increase if more than half of the park’s residents request rent mediation.
“In places like Hancock, where everybody gets their increases at different times, that’s never going to happen,” according to Jennifer Reynolds, an organizing fellow with the progressive nonprofit Maine People’s Alliance.
Reynolds said efforts to cap lot rents — both permanently and temporarily — are gaining momentum as out-of-state corporations buy up more Maine mobile home parks.
“It’s an investment opportunity for them,” Reynolds said. “They’re just going to extract as much wealth as they can and move on.”
She identified four towns with lot rent control ordinances already in place— Sanford, Searsport, Waterville and Old Orchard Beach — and at least seven municipalities where temporary caps have been approved. Other residents have banded together to buy their mobile home communities, including the 129-lot Cedar Falls Mobile Home Park in Bangor.
In mid-May, Sanford city councilors adopted a new rule that will bar mobile park owners from raising rents above 3%, limit them to doing so once every 12 months and require they provide 90 day notice to residents.