Sartell mobile home park residents file complaint against owners

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

The residents’ suit lists allegations including raw sewage exposure, utility overcharges and the enforcement of invalid leases, according to the release.

The case also alleges the defendants:

• Knowingly operated compromised water and sewage systems that cause human excrement and other sewage to back up into residents’ homes and leak onto rented lots and community spaces.
• Installed utility meters under each home with the stated purpose of charging each resident for the utilities that they use. However, the complaint alleges the meters don’t work or charge residents for inaccurate utility use.
• Falsely informed Sartell Manufactured Home Park residents that state law required them to re-sign their leases under duress and threat of eviction. This was done allegedly without disclosing that the leases presented to them contained new, illegal and restrictive terms not found in their current leases.

Defendants in the case are 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 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,” Knox said in a media release.

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

“For next steps, the case is just starting. We will seek class action certification soon and hope to help the hundreds of folks who live in the Park,” Rashanda Bruce, an associate at Kaplan Robbins, told St. Cloud LIVE in an email at noon on Thursday.

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