After forming a cooperative, homeowners will use lease payments for maintenance and infrastructure improvements.
The 60 homeowners who live in Wardtown Mobile Home Park in North Freeport have formed a cooperative and taken over the park from Freeport Housing Trust.
On May 13, the newly formed Wardtown Mobile Home Cooperative signed a $200,000-plus, 30-year loan. The homeowners’ $270 monthly lease payment will go toward the loan, which in turn will be used for maintenance and infrastructure improvements in the park. The park stretches from Bragdon Road to land off Route 125.
Dale Whitmore, president of the co-op board, credited Jim Hatch, executive director of Freeport Housing Trust, with coming up with the concept of the Wardtown Mobile Home Cooperative. Whitmore and Hatch are both members of the board of Freeport Housing Trust, which owns other rental properties in Freeport.
“Jim wanted to give the residents that opportunity,” Whitmore said. “Last September, he came up with the idea. It’s a pretty good one.”
The Genesis Community Loan Fund of Damariscotta is providing the loan. The Genesis Community Loan Fund is a link in the development of affordable housing and delivery of services in the state. Its stated mission is “to bring together resources to create housing and other economic and social opportunities for underserved people and communities.” Genesis is a statewide nonprofit organization that began in 1992.
In a press release, Genesis said that residents of Wardtown Mobile Home Park secured funding support from both the Genesis Community Loan Fund and Maine State Housing Authority to become the sixth resident-owned community in Maine. Aided in their purchase acquisition by assistance from the Cooperative Development Institute under the NEROC (New England Resident Owned Communities) program, the residents have engaged in extensive training and organizational development, the press release said.
Andy Danforth, director of the New England Resident Owned Communities Program, said, “For nine long months, the residents of this community worked toward resident ownership and it is so great to see them finally in control of their community. We are proud to assist in the process and in operating their community going forward. Wardtown Mobile Home Cooperative is now among over 170 proud resident-owned community cooperatives throughout the country.”
Hatch said that when Freeport Housing Trust purchased Wardtown Park in 1997, “it was our hope that one day we could help the residents become the owners of the land under their homes.”
Whitmore, also vice president of the town’s Project Review Board, said that the mission of the co-op will remain the same as it was with Freeport Housing Trust.
“This is going to be affordable housing, and always will be affordable housing,” he said.
Wardtown Mobile Home Park members met last September at the Freeport Community Library to get the concept moving.
“The majority of the people there voted to pursue the matter, which we did,” said Whitmore, who is retired and suffering from a lung condition. “It took nine months of negotiating things, which we did. We closed Wednesday.”
The board of directors conducted its first meeting on Monday, May 18, at the Wardtown Mobile Home Cooperative office, set up in a mobile home on the other side of the park from Whitmore.
Officers of the co-op also include Mikal Guimond, vice president; Deanna Coro, secretary; and Michelle Whitmore, treasurer, who is not related to Dale Whitmore.
“This gives them an opportunity to run the park the way they want to see it run,” Whitmore said. “We’ve already had engineers come in here to look the roads over. We want it to be appealing – not overgrown with trees like it is now.”
Whitmore said the lease fee will go toward utilities, plowing, taxes, mowing of common areas and more.
“There’s a lot of work to this,” he said, “and people understand that.”
Whitmore can open his door and shout to the co-op treasurer, who lives next door. Deanna and Darrell Coro, in fact, have lived at 4 Lajoie Way for 28 years.
Deanna Coro said she first heard of the concept from a friend, who lives at Brunswick Bay Mobile Home Cooperative in Brunswick.
“Their infrastructure was really bad,” Coro said, “and it’s getting better.”
Coro, manager of food service at Pownal Elementary School, also chairs the co-op’s membership council.
“If someone wants to sell their home, I am the first person to see,” she said. “I get the paperwork going.”
Coro recalls that Wilfred Lajoie owned the mobile home park when she moved there nearly three decades ago.
“We’ve done a lot of work to get this,” she said. “Also, it’s kind of forced us to meet our neighbors. I know quite a few of them now.”
Deanna Coro has lived in the same mobile home at 4 Lajoie Drive in Freeport for 28 years with her husband, Darrell. Coro is secretary of the Wardtown Mobile Home Cooperative, which took ownership of the 60 mobile homes in the park last Wednesday.
Dale Whitmore, president of the newly formed Wardtown Mobile Home Cooperative, stands outside the door of his home at 2 Lajoie Drive.Staff photos by Larry Grard
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