Residents of Sartell mobile home park file complaint against owners – Twin Cities

Four residents of Sartell Manufactured Home Park filed a class action lawsuit against the park’s owners on Oct. 22, according to a news release from Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid and Minneapolis-based law firm Robins Kaplan LLP.

The residents’ lawsuit contains allegations including exposure to raw sewage, excessive energy costs and the enforcement of invalid leases, the news release said.

The case also alleges that the defendants:

• They have knowingly operated compromised water and sewer systems that allow human feces and other sewage to enter residents’ homes and leak into rented lots and common areas.
• Utility meters installed under each house with the aim of charging each resident for the utilities they use. However, the complaint alleges that the meters are not working or residents are being charged for inaccurate utility use.
• The residents of Sartell Manufactured Home Park were falsely informed that state law required them to resign their leases under duress and the threat of eviction. This was reportedly done without disclosing that the lease agreements presented to them contained new, illegal and restrictive terms not found in their current lease agreements.

Defendants in the case include Impact MHC Management, Impact Communities, Sartell MHP, Sartell MHP 2, Gemstone Communities, Sartell MHC, David Reynolds and Frank Rolfe. The park’s owners live out of state.

Marcie Knox is one of the residents of Sartell Manufactured Home Park who filed the complaint.

“When I asked them to fix the sewer 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 trash just to make my house habitable,” Knox said in a press release.

St. Cloud LIVE reached out to Sartell Manufactured Home Park for comment. They have not responded at this time.

“The next steps are just getting started. We will soon file for class action certification and hope to help the hundreds of people who live in the park,” Rashanda Bruce, an employee at Kaplan Robbins, told St. Cloud LIVE in an email at noon Thursday.

Sartell Manufactured Home Park is located at 106 Second St. S Office, Sartell.