Auburn city councilors heard Monday from advocates for mobile home park owners and residents as they continue to review an ordinance aimed at regulating lot rents.

After being approached by several mobile home park tenants, the council voted in January to implement a moratorium on trailer park lot rent increases and to work on an ordinance that would address steep increases.

Many of the residents said their lot rents had risen substantially in the past couple of years, with some seeing a jump of more than $100 a month last fall. They feared that some tenants could become priced out of their homes and end up homeless.

The draft ordinance before the council would cap lot rent increases to once per year not to exceed the annual consumer price index or 5% of the lot rent, whichever is less. It would also require park owners to give a 90-day notice ahead of an increase.

The ordinance would create a board to oversee resident petitions to proposed rent increases and handle requests from park owners to raise rents beyond the 5% cap for capital improvements or other expenses that would not be sufficiently covered under the rental increase cap.

The Maine Labor Climate Council, which supports tenants, and the Manufactured Housing Association of Maine were invited by the city to speak at the workshop Monday.

Julie Smith, executive director of the Manufactured Housing Association of Maine, which represents mobile home park owners and manufacturers, argued that aspects of the drafted ordinance would create “unintended consequences” for park owners and lot renters.

She took issue with the timeline for which park owners have to raise rents annually and said that some standards in the draft were not well defined.

She also argued that the consumer price index does not always accurately reflect the operating cost increases park owners face annually, and that the CPI has not kept up with inflation in several areas of the market. She was also concerned that the rent cap would not keep up with yearly property tax increases.

She suggested that the city use an annual rent cap based on increases to the city’s annual budget.

Dan Neumann with the Maine Labor Climate Council, which helped trailer park residents in the city advocate for a moratorium and ordinance earlier this year, said the draft ordinance is strong but asked councilors to include a cap on rent increases for vacant lots as well.

Without it, they argued, park owners are incentivized to evict tenants so they can raise rents on those lots.

Councilors seemed split on the issue.

Ward 1 Councilor Rachel Randall argued for some kind of rent cap on vacant mobile home lots, perhaps allowing park owners to raise rents on those lots by double the rent cap.

She was concerned that the city could end up in a position where more subsidized housing is needed because people are getting priced out of mobile home parks. 

Randall mentioned the resolution councilors passed last month outlining goals to build 1,300 more housing units by 2031 based on results from a 2025 housing study. The study identified a need for more housing for people making 80% or less of the area median Income.

At-large Councilor Adam Platz was not interested in putting a rent cap on vacant lots, feeling like that’s wading too much in subsidizing housing for a select group of renters, which is not the city’s place, he said. It’s an argument Mayor Jeff Harmon has also made in the past and reiterated Monday night.

“If we want to talk about, again in my opinion … future development to achieve 1,300 units, I’d love to talk about new mobile home park development,” Platz said. “I’d love to see what we can do to get developers in here to get excited about building new inventory and perhaps with even stricter regulations because they’re entering a system that could already have those regulations.”

The conversation turned into a debate about what the goal of the draft ordinance should be. Randall thought it should protect current and future residents, aiming to preserve the parks as unsubsidized yet affordable housing options.

“If we allow the vacancy reset to constantly happen every time the mobile home switches ownership, and then it goes up to market rate, and then the next time it happens, we’re not going to have the affordable housing there anymore,” she said.

Platz and Harmon thought its aim should be to protect current residents, not future ones. Platz said the burden of subsidized housing should be on the city, not the landlords.

“To me, this particular ordinance isn’t about long-term preservation,” Platz said. “To me, personally, this ordinance is about those folks and about where they’re at today.

“I have a lot of trepidation overly regulating these landlords. I’m happy to do quite a bit for the folks who are currently housed,” he said.