Manfuctured home park tenants often have no protection when new owners bring new fees

She never got an answer. She would spend the next three years asking versions of the same question, in writing, while the park’s payments system turned a charge she didn’t owe into late fees, an inflated balance, and eventually an eviction filing against a tenant who was, the whole time, trying to pay her rent.

Kilbride is a single mother of four daughters. After disability limited her job prospects, she lost her home to foreclosure in 2007. After a series of moves, her family eventually settled into Big Lake Estates in September 2020. Following years of tumult, having just clawed her way back to financial stability, she said the mobile home was the only option she had left. “I wouldn’t live here if I didn’t have to,” she said. 

Kilbride’s story, and the stories of those in similar predicaments, underscore the lack of protections for people who live in manufactured home parks, where people own their home but not the land beneath it. Time and again, management companies find creative ways to exploit residents who feel powerless to do anything about it. 

“Everyone here thinks low income means less rights,” Kilbride said.  

An installation no one permitted

Big Lake Estates is a 124-lot manufactured home community about 45 minutes northwest of Minneapolis in the city of Big Lake. It was acquired in late 2020 by Big Lake MHC LLC, a Delaware-registered entity operated by Sado Management under owner Joel Mazur. Rent began climbing after the sale. 

In the summer of 2022, management added something new: individual water submeters at every home, with water and sewer billed back to residents — including those who had signed leases saying those services were free. 

To install the meters, Mazur hired Clayton Hultman, a local handyman who advertises on Nextdoor as “Clayton from Hultmans Plumbing.”

Big trouble in Little Canada: Water bills at manufactured home park skyrocket after unpermitted work

When Big Lake Estates converted to submetering in 2022, Minnesota law said little about how a park should do it. The Legislature changed that in 2023. State law now requires park owners to provide residents sample bills for three months before utility billing; caps rent for 13 months after conversion for residents whose leases included water and sewer; and requires that meters be installed or repaired only by a licensed plumber, electrician or manufactured home installer. The current law also bars park owners from charging residents any capital or administrative costs of providing utility service, including late fees.

The conversion at Big Lake Estates’ preceded those 2023 reforms. Residents received no sample bills; the first notice Kilbride got was dated one day after billing began. But Kilbride never needed the new law; her lease expressly stated what she owed. In lease documents reviewed by the Reformer, this original version states expectations clearly: section 5 promised water and sewer “at no extra charge,” and Section 18 said any change that substantially modified the lease would not apply to her. No addendum was ever signed, but the park began billing her anyway. 

Lilly Sasse, an organizer with the Manufactured Home Resident Collective with ISAIAH, an ecumenical progressive nonprofit, said this is a common tactic across parks under private investor management: “These new private equity firms come in and set new rules, telling people that they’re supposed to abide by them, even though the lease they signed indicates that they don’t have to.”

Hultman, the plumber, confirmed in a phone interview with the Reformer that Mazur hired him directly and that the job took about two and a half months, working through whatever fittings each home had: SharkBite, PEX, compression, copper. He installed the meters in line between each home’s curb stop and its water line. Once completed, Hultman said he offered Mazur a 90-day warranty on the work. After that, he said, problems belonged to “the park or the tenant.” Hultman added, unprompted: “Joel was sort of cheap about things.”

Hultman holds no Minnesota plumbing license, according to the state Department of Labor and Industry’s licensing database. In follow-up text messages, Hultman told the Reformer he performed the installation under his father’s plumbing license, not his own, noting his father passed away two years ago. He said that he understood how this may have been perceived by residents, but said he “probably had more experience than most plumbers out there” and that “most [manufactured home residents] don’t really take care of their stuff and that’s why they live there.” He also confirmed his assistant was unlicensed and “didn’t hold any specific knowledge” regarding how to complete the project. 

A DLI plumbing inspector, Charles Olson, put the license requirement plainly in a written response to Kilbride: “New installation of a water meter would require a licensed plumber. The city of Big Lake has an inspection department and would issue the permit(s).” 

City Administrator Hanna Klimmek later confirmed to the Reformer that no permits were ever filed. The city has reached out to the park to determine what permit applications should be submitted for work done four years ago.

Joel Mazur and Sado Management did not respond to requests for comment.

None of the homes had electrical outlets near their curb stops, Hultman acknowledged, meaning the heat tape that protects outdoor water lines through a Minnesota winter had nowhere to plug in. Hultman said the park provided heat tape and extension cords, leaving installation to tenants. His offers to install $1,200 heat wrap kits directly to park residents have gone largely unanswered, with only a handful sold. Kilbride says no tape, no cords, and no instruction ever reached her. “There was zero instruction. There wasn’t a policy. I asked for months and months,” she said. 

What’s not in dispute is what happened next. That winter, meters froze, with the park’s own payment portal recording the cause in a February 2023 credit entry: “Partial Water & Sewer credit due to broken meter caused by frozen pipes.” The park knew the meter froze, then credited Kilbride $28.16 for the broken meter, only to turn around and bill her $161 to replace it.

‘How can I pay my rent?’

Over the following months, Kilbride wrote to management again and again seeking resolution, according to logs of the park’s own message system reviewed by the Reformer. She alerted them to correspondence with Hultman, the unlicensed plumbing contractor, who told her he was responsible for installing the now frozen meter, and said she refused to pay for someone else’s mistake. 

In early March, she told them she was unable to pay the accumulated bill.

Minnesota needs a Manufactured Home Park Resident Bill of Rights

That message finally reached the corporate office. The same day, an email went out to on-site staff, later printed and handed to Kilbride with a sticky note attached: corporate had “removed the late charge and moved the damage charge while we work to resolve the meter issue.” She could pay her $580 rent. The handwritten note confirmed the rest: the “$161.00 fee being moved to May 1st 2023.”

Moved — not removed. 

Two days later, the park sent her a ”pay or quit” notice. The payment portal, which doesn’t allow payments below the full balance, kept blocking her from paying the agreed upon $580, insisting on payment for the additional $161. She documented attempt after attempt: February 28, March 27, April 2, April 3, each one a screenshot of the same yellow banner refusing a different amount. The office, per policy stated to Kilbride, wouldn’t take a cashier’s check. Late fees stacked onto rent she was being prevented from paying.

In early April, Kilbride wrote: “You’re bullying a single mother and disabled veteran into paying illegal fees to remain in this poorly maintained community. My pipes didn’t burst. My pipes were never frozen. Your contractor damaged my property.”

That same day, she paid the entire balance: $1,206.40, the disputed fee included. Not because she agreed she owed it, but because it was the only way the system would accept her rent.

The meters were not the park’s only infrastructure failure.

Around the same time, another resident reported sewage bubbling over manholes to state environmental regulators, according to a Reformer public records request. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) contacted Sherburne County, which dispatched environmental specialist Jerome Doede to visit the property and photograph frozen sewage accumulated around a manhole cover outside the home.

When Doede stopped  by the park office afterward, staff told him something similar had happened “a month ago in the same spot.” Doede issued a formal public health nuisance letter to the park’s owner that day. 

In January 2026, the MPCA fined Big Lake Estates $24,150 for multiple wastewater violations and required corrective action under a stipulation agreement. An environmental specialist described the response: The park “did not make timely attempts to stop the release or clean up the frozen sewage,” and “these releases have been occurring for almost two months.”

In his response to the MPCA before signing the settlement, Mazur said the park was “not aware of the requirement under Minnesota law” to notify regulators of the discharge, and had “reasonably believed” that licensed contractors would handle any state obligations. The agency assessed the full penalty anyway.

This spring, the bill for the park’s sewer problems arrived, addressed to the residents. A May 2026 rent increase notice to Kilbride’s neighbors at 405 Polk raised their lot rent from $660 to $745, citing “a significant wastewater rehabilitation project to address aging infrastructure within the community’s sewer system.” Kilbride’s own rent, $440 with utilities included when she moved in, will reach $795 in August, an increase of more than 80% since 2020 — nearly triple the rate of inflation during that time. A bill at the Legislature this year would have capped the annual increase to 3% but didn’t pass.

Three evictions on one street

In January this year, Big Lake MHC LLC filed to evict Kilbride for nonpayment. It was the company’s third eviction filing on Polk Street in five months: 407 Polk in September, 408 Polk in December, 416 Polk in January, all through the same law firm, Landlord Resource Network LLC.

Kilbride had fallen behind in December. In January, when she went to catch up, the payment portal was disabled. She documented more than 15 attempts to pay between January 6 and the filing date: online, by phone and in person at an office that accepts no cash, no cashier’s checks, and no certified funds of any kind. 

“Being evicted while actively trying to pay your rent is f*cking wild to me,” she said.

Seventy days before the park filed that eviction, the park had denied her Americans with Disabilities Act accommodation request for an accessible sidewalk between her parking space and her door, citing budget. Her neighbor got a new sidewalk. Then, six days after filing, the park added $1,385 to her bill for court costs, filing fees and “damages.” No court had awarded these fees.

The Minnesota attorney general’s office declined to comment. 

Her two Polk Street neighbors faced their eviction hearings without lawyers, and both settled within weeks. Kilbride was represented by Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, and her case ran nearly four months, up to the day of an evidentiary hearing at which three park managers were scheduled to testify. The park settled instead. Kilbride paid rent and utilities only; no disputed fees. The court expunged the case in May.

In June 2026, Big Lake sent a formal notice of code complaint to Mazur at Sado Management’s Delaware address, citing five complaints received by city staff regarding conditions at Big Lake Estates: shelter access and emergency preparedness; building code concerns in the park’s common basement; debris and property maintenance; ongoing sewage and environmental concerns; and the unpermitted water meter installations, with some referred to Sherburne County. 

Congress takes notice 

Last month, U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, sent a formal document request to Mazur at Sado Capital, citing an ongoing New Hampshire attorney general investigation into the company’s rent increases and requesting 14 categories of records about its business practices across manufactured housing communities.

Meanwhile, at Sado-managed Big Lake Estates, Katherine Kilbride documented everything. Her record stands: four years of screenshots, ledgers, portal messages and complaints, most of it from the park’s own systems. Per park policy, she continues to pay rent using the same system that prohibited her payments in the first place.