Housing Cooperatives in Maine: Community-Owned Solutions for Maine’s Housing Crisis
Resident-owned manufactured housing communities, limited-equity developments, and other cooperative solutions are giving more Mainers the opportunity to build affordable homes and stronger communities together.
As communities across Maine wrestle with rising housing costs, displacement pressures, and a shortage of permanently affordable homes, cooperative housing is gaining attention as an alternative and practical solution. It allows residents to create stable, community-controlled housing for the long term. Communities across the state are now exploring cooperative models to address a range of needs, including affordability, aging in place, climate resilience, intentional community, and equitable ownership..
Much of this attention has been driven by growing concerns in manufactured housing communities, where residents often own their homes but rent the land beneath them. In towns across Maine including Searsport, Norway, Freedom, and others, recent debates over rent stabilization, park ownership changes, and long-term affordability have highlighted how vulnerable residents can be when lot rents rise or park ownership shifts (Midcoast Villager).
These manufactured home communities remain one of Maine’s most important sources of affordable housing, but the current ownership structure leaves residents exposed to cost increases they have very little control over. In response to that reality, towns and residents have begun considering ordinances, organizing locally, and exploring alternatives that offer more stability (Midcoast Villager).
Resident-Owned Manufactured Housing Communities
The most established segment of Maine’s housing cooperative landscape is its network of resident-owned manufactured housing cooperatives (ROCs). This model directly addresses pressures created by rising land values and outside ownership by keeping housing in community control and removing it from speculative markets.
Maine is now home to 13 resident-owned communities, including newer additions like Cedar Falls Residents Cooperative, which became resident-owned in February 2025, and Blue Rock Cooperative, which joined the growing list in May 2025. Other resident-owned communities stretch all across the state, including Brunswick, Freeport, Thomaston, Camden, Waldoboro, Augusta, Rockland, Bangor, and Biddeford. These cooperatives are an often overlooked form of permanently community-controlled housing, governed by the people who live there rather than outside owners.
Like any neighborhood, resident-owned communities must maintain aging infrastructure, secure financing, and navigate major capital improvements, work that often requires technical assistance alongside resident leadership.
A recent example is Charter Oaks Village Cooperative in Arundel, where residents this summer celebrated the start of a nearly $2 million water infrastructure improvement project. Supported through Cooperative Development Institute’s Water Infrastructure Support Program (WISP), the largely grant-funded project will replace aging water infrastructure and help ensure the long-term affordability and sustainability of the resident-owned community.
Board President Marcus Baldwin noted that without this critical investment, the community would not have been able to remain affordable, illustrating how resident ownership, combined with technical assistance and infrastructure investment, can help preserve affordable housing for generations (CDI.coop).
Raise-Op Housing Cooperative – Lewiston
Another longstanding housing co-op example is Raise-Op Housing Cooperative in Lewiston, which describes itself as Maine’s oldest urban multi-unit housing cooperative. Founded in 2008 by four young adults working low-wage jobs in downtown Lewiston, Raise-Op grew from one simple idea: they wanted more control over their housing. Raise-Op’s Cooperative Development Organizer, Craig Saddlemire said the founders continued hearing from people who wanted to live in cooperative housing but lacked the resources to start their own organizations. “It was that community feedback that led the Raise-Op to begin expanding and hiring staff to make it easier for others to participate in cooperative housing.”
Raise-Op now operates five apartment buildings with 33 units housing approximately 90 residents in Lewiston’s Tree Streets neighborhood. Its properties include both resident-owned, limited-equity cooperative housing and income-restricted rental housing developed through nonprofit partnerships to secure access to affordable housing. For Saddlemire, the impact extends beyond affordability. He explains that “[b]eing able to make decisions about their homes, making operating budgets, setting the rent, and using the organization as a vehicle to help other residents in the community is truly a transformative experience for the residents.”
He explains that residents regularly help one another with childcare, transportation, meals, and other daily needs. When financial hardship arises, members work to support their neighbors before considering eviction, even creating an internal emergency rent relief program. He also adds that since its founding in 2008, Raise-Op has carried out only one eviction. Possibly more exciting for the cooperative is that two young people who grew up in Raise-Op graduated in the top ten of their class at Lewiston High School this year.
As an active member of the Cooperative Maine Business Alliance, with representation on its Steering Committee, the cooperative has also helped strengthen connections among housing cooperatives, worker cooperatives, food co-ops, credit unions, and other sectors of Maine’s cooperative economy. Beyond its own housing, the cooperative also provides organizing and development support to emerging cooperative housing projects through its Start your Own Housing Cooperative initiative. Together, these efforts reflect an important shift: housing cooperatives are no longer developing in isolation but as part of a broader statewide cooperative ecosystem with a range of accessible support.
Lambers Woods Cooperative – Portland
Soon to become more visible is Maine Cooperative Development Partners, a Portland-based development group working to create limited-equity cooperative housing projects. Limited-equity cooperatives like theirs preserve long-term affordability by limiting the resale price of homes while allowing residents to build modest equity. While not itself a housing cooperative, the organization is developing housing based on cooperative models, including the planned Lambert Woods Cooperative in Portland, which aims to create 90 permanently affordable cooperative homes. The cooperative will be ready for occupancy in spring 2027.
Norway Equitable Housing Cooperative – Norway
In western Maine, the Norway Equitable Housing Cooperative (NEHC) continues to move forward through phased development under the umbrella of the Center for an Ecology-Based Economy (CEBE). The project illustrates both the promise of cooperative housing and the significant time, organizing, and development capacity required to bring community-owned housing from vision to reality.
Organizers began exploring the cooperative model in 2021, eventually purchasing a downtown Whitman Street property after years of community organizing. Initial plans grew from 12 to 17 apartments, but funding challenges, staff transitions, and the complexities of organizing future residents before homes existed slowed progress. Rather than abandon the vision, CEBE regrouped and continued working toward a development model that can support long-term resident ownership.
As part of that process, a nonprofit organization will be formed to hold and steward the project through research, development, financing, and construction, with the goal of exploring a transition to a resident-owned cooperative once the building is completed and occupied. This approach recognizes a common challenge in cooperative housing development: future residents cannot form and govern a cooperative before the housing exists, yet meaningful resident engagement is essential to long-term success. Many future cooperative residents are also the people most in need of affordable housing and may be balancing employment, family responsibilities, and housing instability while participating in a complex, multi-year development process. A supportive development structure can help create the capacity needed to move the project forward while ensuring future residents have the opportunity to shape and steward the cooperative from the beginning.
According to Board President Emlyn Emerock, the organization has secured an extension of its previous planning board approvals and expects to apply for MaineHousing funding this fall with a new team of partners. She also added that during the longer pause in the project, the vacant property remained connected to the community through efforts like the “Grow an Extra Row” project, which grew potatoes and winter squash to support the local food pantry.
Executive Director Ania Wright said the years-long organizing effort has highlighted that successful cooperative housing depends on broad resident engagement and shared leadership rather than relying on a small group of champions, which was initially the case for NEHC. The experience has also highlighted the need for stronger pathways, partnerships, and funding structures to support cooperative housing development in Maine, and has fueled CEBE’s engagement in statewide advocacy around cooperative housing solutions.
Experiences like those of Raise-Op and CEBE highlight why housing cooperatives remain relatively uncommon. Developing community-owned housing requires patient organizing, specialized legal and financial expertise, access to appropriate financing, and sustained technical assistance. As more organizations across Maine share knowledge and development experience, the infrastructure needed to support emerging housing cooperatives is beginning to grow.
Other Cooperative Housing Models in Maine
Beyond formally incorporated cooperatives, Maine also has a growing ecosystem of cohousing projects, intentional communities, collective living arrangements, and emerging cooperative housing initiatives. Projects such as Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage, Rabbit Hole Cooperative Housing in Portland, and smaller grassroots initiatives in Blue Hill, Waldoboro, Monmouth, and Bangor reflect growing interest in shared ownership and community-centered living models.
Not all operate as legal housing cooperatives. Some use nonprofit, LLC, collective, or hybrid structures while practicing cooperative governance. This highlights both the flexibility of cooperative housing and the challenges of financing and developing new models.
Current interest in cooperative housing was strongly reflected at this year’s Principle 6 Conference held in Auburn, where housing co-ops were prominently represented throughout the Co-op Ecosystem Celebration and workshop program. Attendees expressed growing excitement about cooperative housing as a practical, community-centered response to Maine’s housing challenges. While the movement remains relatively small, momentum is clearly building.
Housing cooperatives will not solve Maine’s housing crisis on their own. Financing remains difficult, development takes time, and every community faces unique challenges. But across the state, residents are demonstrating that cooperative ownership is already providing practical solutions by preserving affordability, giving residents greater control over their homes, and strengthening community connections. Saddlemire explains that cooperative housing can be life-changing for community members: “It feels truly like a stable home where they have agency over their living circumstances…”
As communities across Maine continue searching for housing solutions, cooperative ownership is attracting growing attention. What used to be a handful of isolated projects is steadily becoming a connected movement, helping more Mainers imagine housing as something communities can own, govern, and steward together.
Resources:
- 2026 Maine Housing Cooperative List (curated by CMBA in collaboration with cooperative leaders across Maine)
- Co-op Month Webinar Series 2025 – Housing Co-ops (a three part webinar series on Maine Housing Cooperatives)
Sources and acknowledgments
- Thank you to Craig Saddlemire (Raise-Op Housing Cooperative) and Ania Wright & Emlyn Emerock (Norway Equitable Housing Cooperative/CEBE) for sharing information and insights that informed this story.
- Additional sources: Midcoast Villager, CDI, & Maine Cooperative Development Partners,
