Photo by Deb Gau Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, along with current and past residents of the Broadmoor Valley mobile home park, speak about unsafe conditions at the park during a Friday press conference. The Attorney General’s Office announced it’s suing Broadmoor Valley owner Schierholz and Associates.

MARSHALL — When they started speaking out three years ago, residents of the Broadmoor Valley mobile home park in Marshall said they didn’t know what to expect. But the bad roads and other conditions in the park weren’t getting fixed, and they had to do something.

“We wanted to have a voice that was heard,” said Jesus “Chuy” Hernandez, president of the Broadmoor Valley residents’ association.

The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office listened. On Friday, Attorney General Keith Ellison announced that his office is suing Broadmoor Valley owner Schierholz and Associates over unsafe conditions at the park, as well as other illegal practices.

The lawsuit is asking for the court to order Schierholz and Associates to fix the unsafe conditions at Broadmoor Valley, as well as for civil penalties and restitution for harmed residents.

“Manufactured home park residents, like all Minnesotans, deserve to afford their lives and live with dignity and respect. But that’s difficult when park owners charge illegal fees and neglect to maintain their parks,” Ellison said. “Schierholz’s conduct violates state law and harms tenants. My office filed this lawsuit to stop these illegal practices and restore dignity to Broadmoor Valley so residents have a healthy and safe place to live.” 

“We’re not asking for fancy roads. We’re asking for what’s right,” Hernandez said. “Our main concern is the safety of our children, our families, the elderly and everyone in this park.”

Efforts by the Independent to contact Paul Schierholz, of Schierholz and Associates, on Friday were unsuccessful.

Ellison and residents of Broadmoor Valley spoke at a press conference in the mobile home park on Friday afternoon. Ellison praised residents for coming together.

“The work that they did is courageous,” Ellison said. He met with about 50 residents in 2019, and toured Broadmoor Valley.

A lawsuit was filed against Schierholz and Associates, Inc., in Lyon County District Court on Friday. Among other counts, the lawsuit alleges that Schierholz and Associates have failed to maintain the streets and mobile home park to state standards.

“There are a lot of homes here that are derelict,” said Assistant Attorney General Bennett Hartz.

The civil complaint described abandoned mobile homes with broken windows and no siding, and potholes as deep as 11 inches in the gravel roads. School buses are no longer allowed in the park due to the road conditions, and residents said children now have to walk out to the side of a busy highway to wait for the bus.

The lawsuit has several other counts against Schierholz and Associates, including that residents were charged unlawfully high fees for late rent payments. Under state law, late rent fees are limited to 8% of the amount overdue. According to the lawsuit, residents have routinely been charged late fees that go above the 8% limit. In one example from 2019, a resident was charged a $30 late fee on an overdue balance of $25, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also alleges that Schierholz has retaliated against residents, including by threatening legal action or by threatening to close down the mobile home park. In one example, after residents held a community cleanup and a cookout on two vacant lots at Broadmoor Valley, Schierholz sent one resident a $1,680 bill. That amount was the equivalent of a full month’s rent and security deposits on the two vacant lots used for the cookout, the lawsuit said. Members of the residents’ association had to raise money to help pay the bill.

On Friday, residents talked about their fears for the safety of children living in Broadmoor Valley, their difficulties getting frozen pipes fixed in the winter, and the isolation they felt in trying to address the park’s problems.

“If you are fenced in, you don’t feel included. You feel isolated from the community. That’s kind of what happens here,” Hernandez said.

Broadmoor Valley resident Anais Rodriguez said she’s seen the streets deteriorate at the park over the years.

“The only thing we want is for him to fix our streets. We pay our rent,” Rodriguez said.

There have been other issues at the park too, Rodriguez said. She said the park’s storm shelter also had problems with leaks a couple of years ago. More recently, the Marshall Fire Department was called out to an unauthorized burn pit near the shelter, she said.

Since 2018, Broadmoor Valley residents have also approached the city of Marshall more than once about conditions at the park. This summer, Marshall City Council members voted to take a separate action against Schierholz. Marshall City Attorney Dennis Simpson said the city plans to order Schierholz to repair or remove four unsafe abandoned mobile homes at the park.

Ellison said mobile home parks are an important source of affordable housing in Minnesota, but conditions like those at Broadmoor Valley hurt the industry.

“This is not to paint a broad brush against everybody,” Ellison said of the lawsuit against Schierholz. Ellison said he was calling on other manufactured housing owners to stand up against unlawful practices.