(Editor’s note: The following story, based on information contained in a lawsuit filing, outlines some of the complaints those mobile-home park residents have been alleging for years at city council meetings, county board meetings, town meetings and at protest demonstrations.)
by Dennis Dalman
Exposure to raw sewage, overcharging for utilities and invalid leases are at the heart of a class-action lawsuit filed jointly by Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid and Robins Kaplan LLP (a Minneapolis law firm) against the two co-owners of a mobile home park in Sartell.
The suit was filed in Stearns County District Court Oct. 22. It alleges the two defendants used predatory business practices against the tenants of the Park. It is known as “Sartell Manufactured Home Park,” located at 106 Second Street S.
The lawsuit names the out-of-state owners of the Sartell Manufactured Home Park as the defendants. They are David Reynolds and Frank Rolfe, Colorado residents, who bought the long-established Park in 2014 and then operated the Sartell Park under various entities, two examples being RV Horizons and Impact Communities. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs allege Rolfe and Reynolds shuffled the Park among various “shell companies” during the past decade while ignoring residents’ complaints having to do with their security, health and safety.
The Park in question was for years known as Hi-Vue Mobile Home Park, which opened in 1971 and was sold to Reynolds and Rolfe in 2014. Two years later, the Park was put up for sale at a price of $1.5 million. At that time, the Park’s residents got together and attempted to get financing to purchase the Park, but they were unsuccessful in securing that much funding. Rolfe and Reynolds then retained ownership.
According to the complaint, throughout the years the defendants allegedly defrauded residents by falsely informing each resident, under duress and the threat of eviction, that state law required them to re-sign their leases while failing to disclose that the newly-signed leases contained new, illegal and restrictive terms not specified in the earlier leases.
Second, the complaint alleges the defendants installed utility meters under each home with the stated purpose of charging each resident for the utilities that they use. In reality, the meters allegedly either do not work or the defendants are being charged for utility use that is wildly inaccurate. The residents have long complained about erratic billing for utility costs. The park switched to metered billing in May 2020, and monthly charges began to vary widely. One tenant was charged for 63,088 gallons of water in January 2023. Another owed almost $4,500 in February 2024 for supposedly using 335,510 gallons. The lawsuit states the tenant, a woman, had an anxiety attack after getting her bill and had to be hospitalized.
Third, the suit claims that defendants knowingly operate compromised water and sewage systems that cause human excrement and other sewage to back-up into residents’ homes and leak onto residents’ rented lots and community spaces, making the Park virtually uninhabitable.
One of the plaintiffs in the action, and a longtime resident of the Park, Marcie Knox, stated: “When I asked them to fix the raw sewage problem under my house, they blamed me and refused to pay for the repairs. I was forced to spend my entire pandemic stimulus check cleaning up the filth just to make my house habitable.”
Besides Knox, the three other plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit are long-time Park residents Bradley Bandas, Janet Eich and Cheryl Skaj.
“For years, defendants have exploited and preyed upon our clients and their neighbors in the Park,” contends Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid’s Litigation Director Justin Perl. “These are elderly folks, veterans, disabled persons and low-income families being squeezed out of a tight housing market. Enough is enough. We bring this class action to protect their rights, to get a responsible property manager appointed who will maintain the Park according to this State’s laws, and to remove the current owners who do not care about the residents and their basic rights to health and safety.”
The lawsuit is requesting the court to order Reynolds and Rolfe to make repairs to the wastewater and plumbing systems and do something about the wild swings in their utility billing. It also wants the court to tell the owners to honor the previous leases and revoke the restrictive new lease agreements.
Efforts by the Newsleaders to reach the two defendants for comments have been so far unsuccessful.
