Residents of a Sartell mobile home park are filing a complaint against the Twin Cities owners

Four residents of the 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 the Minneapolis-based law firm Robins Kaplan LLP.

According to the release, the residents’ lawsuit lists allegations including exposure to untreated sewage, inflated utility bills and enforcement of invalid leases.

The case also claims that the defendants:

• Deliberately exploited compromised water supply and sewage systems, through which human excrement and other filth enter residents’ homes and seep into rented lots and public spaces.
• Utility meters are installed under each house with the stated purpose of charging each resident for the utility services they use. However, the complaint alleges the meters are not working or residents are being charged for improper utility usage.
• Residents of Sartell Manufactured Home Park were falsely told that state law required them to re-sign their leases under duress and under 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.

The 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 owners of the park live out of state.

Marcy Knox is one of the Sartell Manufactured Home Park residents 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 had to spend my entire pandemic check cleaning up the mess to make my house livable,” Knox said in a press release.

St. Cloud LIVE has reached out to Sartell Manufactured Home Park for comment. So far they have not responded.

“As for the next steps, the matter is just beginning. We will soon be seeking class action certification and hope to help the hundreds of people who live in the park,” Rashanda Bruce, an attorney at Kaplan Robbins, said in an email Thursday at noon in St. Cloud LIVE.

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