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JAY — When the Select Board meets this Monday, it may have enough information to move ahead on a request to limit rent increases on mobile home lots.
At its Nov. 24 meeting, the board asked Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere to consult with the town’s attorney on whether state law allows Jay to regulate such rent hikes.
“I’m hoping to have the information back from our attorney in time for the meeting (Monday),” LaFreniere said Wednesday. “It’s complicated because other municipalities that have acted have different forms of government, so we need to find out just what we can do as a town with a Select Board (and town meeting and manager) form...
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Tanya Dwyer, who lives at Hidden Circle, said her rent rose $50, to $325 a month — an increase of more than 18 percent. Her disability income is about $670 a month. She said she works part time, but the pay does not cover the higher rent.
You can’t manage a business by focusing on the one-off situations but instead by the greater good of the majority of residents. If you have $670 a month in income, you clearly need to immediately apply for Section 8 as there is no non-subsidized form of housing on earth you can possibly afford – but that’s not representative of 99.99999% of residents. That’s as nuts as saying that McDonald’s has to stop using meat because it might trigger one individual’s food allergies. Rents keep going up because all prices keep going up (water, sewer, property tax, insurance, etc.) and mobile home parks need to justify capital improvements. Sure, socialist folks hate that reality, but anyone with an IQ higher than a lima bean knows that what Maine is doing is downright stupid and will result in massive park closures for redevelopment.

