Residents of a Brunswick mobile home park spent months negotiating to buy their 278-home community, an achievement celebrated Tuesday with a ribbon cutting and visit by Gov. Janet Mills. 

A new state law and state funding enabled the residents of Linnhaven Mobile Home Park to form the Blueberry Fields Cooperative. With the help of state loans and grants, the cooperative spent $26.3 million to buy the park. 

Residents say they feared a new owner would raise rents. 

“We’ve seen other parks get purchased and the rents just went crazy high,” said Melissa McCarthy, a board member who’s lived in the park for nine years. “We have a lot of people on fixed incomes.” 

It’s the first such purchase since Mills signed into law a bill that requires mobile home park owners to provide advance notice to residents of their intent to sell. 

Mills told those gathered outside the park’s office that she hopes the bill will give residents a sense of stability. 

“No one should be afraid that a surprise rent increase will break the bank and break their budget, or someone will buy the land out from under them, and they get evicted,” she said. 

In Brunswick, the residents formed the cooperative to get financing, which includes a $20.6 million loan from MaineHousing and a $3.2 million grant from the Mobile Home Community Preservation Fund. 

Dan Brennan, director of MaineHousing, said they realized in the waning days of the legislative session that mobile home parks were being purchased and some were losing their homes. 

His agency asked the Legislature for $5 million to create the preservation fund. He said amid a lot of talk about a lack of affordable housing, it’s important to keep people in their homes, not just build new ones. 

“You’ve really done something remarkable, not just for yourselves, but think about the future generations of people who are going to live here forever,” he said. 

Nora Gosselin, who works at the Cooperative Development Institute, worked with the park residents to help them through the process of buying the community. 

She said back in February, they worried about a sale to an unknown buyer and potential rent increases of $200 to $300 a month. 

“There has been so much uncertainty and through it all your community came together,” she said. “You asked thoughtful questions, you expressed your fear honestly, you exercised an immense amount of patience and most importantly you trusted one another.” 

McCarthy encouraged others who get the opportunity to purchase their communities to stay optimistic. 

“Don’t be scared,” she said. “You can do it. You have nothing to lose. We were afraid in the beginning, but we were determined and look at us, we made it happen and now we own it.”