A Bowdoin man is organizing neighbors in the mobile home park where he lives to try to stifle rent increases.

Mountain View Estates resident Jerry Highfill gathered 190 signatures, more than enough to present a redrafted version of Old Orchard Beach’s rent control ordinance at Bowdoin’s next annual town meeting.

Jerry Highfill looks over the Facebook group he is putting together to fight against the recent rent increases for Mountain View Estates in Bowdoin. Paul Bagnall / The Times Record

“[Old Orchard Beach] have already done the legwork on this, and they have got it through the petition piece and through the town,” Highfill said. “It’s going to be voted on by all residents in the town in November.”

According to a copy of the petition, the ordinance aims to stem “excessive and unreasonable” rent increases in excess of 5% of the base rent plus an annual average change to the Consumer Price Index, or 10% of the base rent. Highfill said the out-of-state corporation that owns the park would have to justify the reasons for rent increases.

“We need state legislation because we are not the only mobile home park in Maine that has this same problem,” Highfill said.

Highfill said any new tenant who moves into Mountain View Estates has to pay $700 per month in lot rent. No one was aware of the different pricing for mobile home housing in Mountain View Estates until the rent for new tenants was posted in the mobile home broker’s brochure for two of the properties.

Comparatively, Highfill pays $525. According to Highfill, since Aug. 1, three mobile home lots have been leased for the new $700 price tag.

Highfill has transformed the old Facebook page “Bowdoin mobile home tenants against unjust corporate lot increases” into “Maine mobile home owners fed up with corporate excessive lot rent increases.” The new Facebook group is trying to get all the mobile home owners who live in corporate-owned parks to work together and pass information back and forth to get the information to the state legislators.

The new Facebook page has 65 members. Highfill started the page to reach out to other mobile home parks owned by Philips International, but any mobile home resident in other corporate-owned mobile home parks also can reach out to the page, Highfill said.

“Nobody knew this was really going on until I started going around knocking on doors and talking to the people,” Highfill said.

Maine MHP LLC, a subsidiary of the holding company Philips International in Great Neck, New York, purchased Mountain View Estates in June 2021.

Diana Marrone, senior vice president at Philips International, said rents are increased annually, as is common among landlords.

Marrone didn’t express concern about a possible rent stabilization ordinance being passed and said that Philips International would follow the law. However, in a state that is having a difficult time with housing affordability, it would hurt potential investors who may not want to come to Maine to build more affordable housing.

Highfill said even if the rent stabilization were to pass, it would only be a Band-Aid, and the state Legislature would need to step in to write new protections for mobile home parks.

“We are such a small town that it would break the town to get a legal challenge from a New York corporation,” Highfill said.

Highfill took his concerns to the members of the Bowdoin Select Board on Sept. 9 after he spoke with Rep. Sally Cluchey (D) and Sen. Eloise Vitelli (D) about actions he could take to prevent a rent increase on mobile home parks. They said the best bet was to go to Bowdoin and get the town to put out a town warrant and have it voted on as a pathway to implement a rent control ordinance.

“[Philips International] seems to think that anything that happens in the park is just going to come out of the rent,” Highfill said during the Select Board meeting.

“There has been a lot of talk between different legislatures, because this problem is common to Maine right now,” Highfill said.