Holly Ayala was tired of renting when she put nearly all the money she had — $12,000 — into a mobile home in Brunswick.
She found the trailer from the 1970s advertised on Facebook Marketplace at Davis Street Trailer Park. Ayala said she understood it would need some fixing up but had been assured by the property management company that the trailer was livable.
Ayala, her husband and her dog moved into the park in March. Quickly, problems became clear: The unit had no running water or heat. So she and her husband started taking showers at the local recreation center and using the bathroom of the nearby laundromat. Efforts to get the pipes fixed were unsuccessful.
Things came to a head in late September when Brunswick responded to a complaint from a different resident and condemned four units in the 20-unit park, including hers, for problems ranging from deteriorating floors to having no running water.
Deputy Fire Chief Josh Shean said the Brunswick code office had tried to schedule an inspection earlier, but the park’s owner, Massachusetts-based Hekla Ventures, did not respond to their initial requests. Unlike most mobile home parks, the majority of residents at Davis Street rent their units, but Ayala owns her home.
Brunswick officials tried to prepare residents, and said the town could help them with financial aid for temporary housing if they qualified. On Sept. 29, condemned notices were taped to four buildings, and the residents had to leave immediately.
The displaced residents did not have a lot of options. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Brunswick is $2,200, according to Zillow, compared with the approximately $1,500 many were paying at the park. The only local housing shelter, Tedford Housing, has a six-month waitlist.
Their situation speaks to a confluence of housing problems facing Maine: deteriorating mobile home parks, a tight rental market and overburdened shelters. Brunswick stepped in to provide financial assistance to the residents for temporary housing. But, because of a 2024 change in state law, that aid has a time limit of 30 days. Not knowing how long the repairs could take, the town asked the state to help as well.
Town officials are hopeful residents will be able to return home soon. But whereas one other family is making plans to leave the mobile home park entirely, Ayala’s household is stuck for now.
Had she known the unit had no running water, “I would not have bought it,” Ayala said. “I would have continued saving and looking for something better.”
‘Program of last resort’
Brunswick arranged for the families to go to a nearby Days Inn the day the town condemned the homes. The clock was ticking to get them rehoused.
As the situation was developing, Deb Crocker, who oversees the town’s general assistance program, connected with the Maine State Housing Authority and brokered an arrangement for MaineHousing to help pay for the four families in the condemned units to stay at the hotel while their units were repaired.
MaineHousing has paid for two weeks of the residents’ stay, and Brunswick has paid for an additional two weeks, Crocker said.
“We’re really the program of last resort,” Crocker said.
The state money comes from MaineHousing’s emergency housing relief fund, which the Maine Legislature gave $14 million to in this year’s budget to spend on initiatives related to its community aging in place program and efforts to prevent homelessness, according to budget documents.
The authority has some discretion in how it chooses to spend that money, but spokesperson Scott Thistle emphasized the arrangement with Brunswick is unique. MaineHousing has rarely used hotels to help displaced people since the pandemic but turned to it as an emergency because Tedford Housing’s shelter is full.
“We can do it in this case because there’s already a plan in place with the town,” he said.
The arrangement is meant to help stave off a general assistance cliff for the displaced families. The cost of general assistance was the subject of legislative scrutiny in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic as unhoused people and asylum seekers stayed in hotels because affordable rental space was tight. MaineHousing limited what hotels could charge for putting up homeless people in 2023.
Last year, Gov. Janet Mills proposed limiting all general assistance aid to three months in a 12-month period, but that was not adopted. Aside from the limits on hotel lodging, people can apply for general assistance benefits every 30 days.
Thistle said MaineHousing is committed to keeping the Brunswick residents housed and plans to continue paying for their lodging next month if they are still unable to return home or find a new place to live.
Crocker is hoping it will not come to that. As of Oct. 21, she believed one of the families would be rehoused by the end of the week. While she said it was unlikely the town would be reimbursed for the expense of putting people up, she said the park owners should be responsible for picking up some of the costs of housing the displaced residents.
“They knew how badly off some of these units were,” she said.
In limbo
It is not clear how involved Hekla Ventures has been as the homes’ problems were reported. The park’s property management company, Your Maine Place, is based in Corinna, more than an hour from Brunswick. The park’s owner has its headquarters in Boston, and counts “biotech commercialization, manufactured housing, applied AI, essential trades, and mission-driven opportunities” among its disciplines, according to its website. It bought the park for $1.5 million in 2022; many of the units are listed as being from 1989 or older.
Hekla Ventures owns or operates several apartments and houses across Maine and eight other mobile home parks: in Skowhegan, Brewer, Corinna, Dexter, Milo and Brownville. Residents can purchase some mobile homes in a rent-to-own agreement. At least seven of those parks had community standard violations under the state’s former Board of Manufactured Housing between 2023 and 2025, licensing data shows. All the violations were marked as being corrected.
In addition to fixing the homes, Hekla Ventures was required to submit a corrective action plan to Brunswick by Oct. 14 to demonstrate it would not have the same issues in the future, Shean said. That did not occur, and the company was fined $800. The condemned units were first reported by The Times Record.
Hekla Ventures and its property management company, Your Place Maine, did not respond to several calls and emails with questions this week.
Shean said he and Crocker are checking in daily with the displaced residents to see if their landlord is giving them updates on the repairs.
Eric Harris, an assistant football coach at Brunswick High School, said he has heard little from the company, deepening the sense of limbo for him, his partner, Kristie Miquelon, and their six-year-old daughter.
He brought problems at the park to the town’s attention after his foot went through the floor in his living room and a fire started in an electrical outlet in his bedroom. The couple will return to Davis Street if they cannot find another place to live, and so far that is proving difficult.
“I feel like I can’t even think lately because there’s so much to do,” Miquelon said. “So many phone calls to make, so many conversations, so many updates, emails, just figuring things out all the time.”
Ayala, meanwhile, is pushing the property owner to help her and is taking steps of her own.
Brunswick code enforcement documents note that a line connecting Ayala’s home to the park’s water system was broken and reconnected on Oct. 6. But a follow-up inspection on Oct. 13 noted there was still no water in the kitchen faucet, and “the unit owner is working with park management to complete the repairs.”
Access to traditional homeownership was a barrier for Ayala because her credit is poor from medical bills that went into collections, she said. The money she spent on the home was a significant piece of her savings, built up over the years and bolstered by relief checks sent out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A purchase and installment agreement provided by Ayala to The Maine Monitor states the home was being sold “AS IS, WHERE IS, WITH ALL FAULTS,” and notes the seller made no implied warranties of habitability as part of the sale.
Still, Ayala has tried to make the best of it. She put on new doors, and painted the living room and kitchen. She bought space heaters for the chilly spring months until they could get a propane tank.
Despite her grief, she is still trying to get back home. She bought a water tank for $750 last week from Home Depot in hopes it will fix the problem.
This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.