Arundel mobile home park residents suing current, former owners
Homes at Shady Oaks Mobile Home Park in Arundel in November. (Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)
Residents of Shady Oaks Mobile Home Park in Arundel have filed a lawsuit against a group of companies involved in a December ownership transfer involving the park.
In the suit, filed in York County Superior Court on June 24, resident Sondra Bajorski and the Shady Oaks Homeowners Cooperative accuse the park’s current and former owners of intentionally structuring the transfer to circumvent the law.
The four defendants named are Shady Oaks Mobile Home Park LLC, the park’s previous owner; BRT Charitable Foundation, which owned the LLC until December; Onyx Team Investments LLC, which now owns a majority of the park; and Shady Maine Investment LLC, which now owns a stake in the park.
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The residents allege that the execution of a sale, through BRT’s transfer of ownership — of which 50.1% of interest went to SMI and 38.9% went to Onyx — was intentionally structured to avoid the application of a state statute that prohibits the sale of mobile home parks without proper notice to residents.
LD 1931, which became law in 2023, prohibits owners of a mobile home park from selling without giving proper notification to residents, entertaining offers from residents and negotiating in good faith with any resident association that makes an offer.
The lawsuit is seeking financial relief and for the court to overturn the sale to allow the residents to explore their required first option to attempt to purchase the park. The complaint says a majority of park residents are ready to make an offer.
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“Right now, nothing is within our control. If we have a concern (with the park), there’s no way to get it addressed,” Bajorski said. “ We would like to have the opportunity to control our futures.”
‘WE’RE JUST BLANK FACES TO THEM’
Since the transfer of ownership in December 2025, Shady Oaks residents have fought against lot rent increases they said have become too high to handle. For months, residents have been fighting for local protections against price gouging, leading the town to pass a mobile home lot rent stabilization ordinance in June.
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Residents have frequently blamed out-of-state owners like California-based Onyx for those increases, saying that the prioritization of profit has put residents at risk of having to leave — even if they have nowhere to go.
“We’re just blank faces to them,” Shady Oaks resident Peggy Quinn said at a town Select Board meeting in January. “We’re just a check in the mail, but so many of us are the workforce here. We have to live somewhere.”
The complaint states that transfer of ownership from BRT to Onyx resulted in new management and a decrease in both the quality and regularity of park maintenance.
“Shortly after the sale, the new park manager told residents that there would be meetings arranged for them to ‘meet the new owners,’” the complaint reads. “No such meetings ever took place.”
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The new manager has also told residents that their rents will be “substantially” increased in the future, according to the complaint.
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On Monday, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the suit, arguing that the park was not sold but rather that control of the company that owns the park was transferred.
The defendants, represented by Daniel Rosenthal, say that since the land was not what was sold, the plaintiffs have no argument.
“The company that owned the property before the transaction still owns it today,” Rosenthal said in a written statement Wednesday on behalf of his clients. “Under the law in effect at the time of the transaction, this type of ownership restructuring was allowed.”
The defendants declined to comment further due to the pending status of the case.
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Tagged: lawsuits, mobile home parks, rent control, york county Maine
Abigail is a community reporter for Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Sanford, and Wells. She recently moved up to Maine from Connecticut after getting her bachelor’s degree in English/Journalism at the University. More by Abigail Driscoll
