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Not Mobile is a podcast about people in my hometown (Northfield, Minnesota) and across the state who are fighting to protect their communities and one of the most important forms of affordable housing: manufactured home parks.
Nationally, corporations and private equity firms have bought up manufactured home parks and are squeezing money out of the residents: residents who are often low income, immigrants, working families, or people on fixed income (disability and Social Security).
In April 2022, Lakeshore Management Inc, a company that consistently increases rent while cutting amenities, bought the manufactured home park Viking Terrace in Northfield, Minnesota.
This series highlights the residents, lawyers, community leaders, and local and state officials who are fighting back against Lakeshore and fighting for the right of everyone to have a safe, affordable community to call home.
[Previews for this episode play]
I’m Cait Kelley with KYMN Radio and this is Not Mobile: a podcast about people in my hometown and in my state who are fighting to protect their communities and one of the most important forms of affordable housing: manufactured home parks.
Introduction:
This past June, families in Viking Terrace, a manufactured home park in my hometown of Northfield, Minnesota, received threatening letters with photos of their property from the new owner of their park. The photos had circles drawn around offending items or issues and the letters said that if the “violation” was not fixed in a specific number of days, that could trigger eviction proceedings. Residents of the park were cited for having grills and lawn furniture on their patios, for having their children’s toys and bikes on the lawn, for having kiddie pools, and one mother was cited for storing her son’s wheelchair outside her home. People were panicked; in the 46 years the park had been open, never before had residents seen such a flood of violation letters and never for such strict reasons. And these threatening letters were arriving on the heels of the pandemic and during a time of high inflation and a nationwide housing crisis.
The letters and photos were coming from the new Community Manager who worked for Viking Terrace’s new owner: Lakeshore Management.
The 180 or so families of Viking Terrace were shocked to receive these letters from Lakeshore. When the company bought Viking Terrace on April 6th, 2022, the sale came as a surprise to many residents. Though rumors had been swirling about the park being up for sale, the previous owners, Debra and Fran Haan, sold Viking Terrace quietly and quickly without notifying residents of the sale until it was done. The Haans had bought the park in 2003 for $2.5 million and sold it to Lakeshore Management for $5 million. The Haans have not responded to invitations to comment about Viking Terrace or Lakeshore.
This purchase is part of a larger trend where small family owned parks are bought up by bigger multi state companies like Lakeshore, which owns over 100 manufactured housing parks in nine states. The largest number of its parks are in Florida.
Beyond the shock of the sale to Lakeshore, Viking Terrace residents really became concerned when a new lease arrived at their doors in May. The lease was 12 pages long, with an additional attached 35-page list of rules, all double sided. The old lease had been just a couple of pages long. The new rules ranged from typical in manufactured home parks to rules the residents considered extremely restrictive and demeaning. For example, children were not allowed to play in the yards of other homes. All visitors had to be registered with Lakeshore. Visitors, including family, could not visit for longer than ten days at a time. A rule forbidding loitering after 10 p.m. essentially amounted to a curfew for adults and children. In addition, residents were required to maintain the trees in the park, even though they did not own the land the trees were on. Most residents in manufactured housing communities own their homes but rent the land. At the bottom of each page of Lakeshore’s rules, homeowners were expected to initial, in addition to signing their names in several places. The letter accompanying the lease said all homeowners must sign the lease, but even if they didn’t, they would be bound by its rules starting in 60 days.
The lease and rules were also entirely in English. This matters in Viking Terrace because the vast majority of residents are Latino, many of them immigrants from Mexico. Legal documents are already difficult to understand in your native language, let alone in a second language. The Haans had always translated documents sent to residents: English on one side, Spanish on the other.
When residents asked Lakeshore’s Community Manager, Monique, to have the documents translated, multiple people reported she said it was “not her problem.” She did not respond to requests for comment.
After the lease came the flood of violation letters, again all in English. Under the rules of the new lease, which had been signed by only three homeowners, almost nothing was allowed in resident’s yards for “liability” reasons. The mother who received a violation for keeping her son’s wheelchair outside her home also received a violation for having a small plastic pool in the yard that her son uses for physical therapy. Residents were cited for having broken, or simply old-looking skirting on their homes. They were cited for having grills and lawn chairs outside. They were cited for having more cars than Lakeshore allows, even though the Haans had painted additional parking spots for residents who paid to have extra vehicles. Any agreements homeowners had worked out previously with the Haans were not honored. All of these violation letters came with the threat of eviction if the violations were not fixed.
The law in Minnesota, where Viking Terrace and at least five other Lakeshore parks I’ve identified are located, says that a manufactured homeowner never has to sign a new lease after they originally buy their home. And, though new park owners can modify park rules for new residents, they cannot change rules for existing residents in “substantial” ways. But most people don’t know manufactured home laws, I know I didn’t, so when Lakeshore or other companies introduce new strict leases and tell residents they have to sign, residents usually sign.
This series starts with the story of the Viking Terrace residents who refused to sign. In the case of Viking Terrace, residents, local organizers, and the Northfield community came together to fight for the rights of manufactured homeowners in the face of a national trend of corporate takeovers and skyrocketing costs in manufactured home parks.
“Not Mobile” is about the people who have been working together and fighting back to protect both a tight-knit community and one of the last forms of non-government-subsidized affordable housing in the country during a national affordable housing crisis.
Episode 1: Don’t Sign Anything
In this series, you will meet city and state officials, community organizers, lawyers, researchers, and of course the residents of Viking Terrace themselves. But I’ll begin by introducing Mar Valdecantos, a writer, teacher, Spanish immigrant and housing advocate who lives in Northfield. When you meet Mar you can’t help but be impressed by her seemingly boundless energy and how she’s never afraid of speaking her mind. Without Mar, and her organizing partners who you’ll meet in future episodes, the reaction to Lakeshore would not have been so swift nor so effective. Mar is not a resident of Viking Terrace, but she has worked on issues affecting immigrants and on housing issues in Northfield for about six years. In 2016 Mar and three other immigrant women, who at the time all hosted the Spanish-language program El Super Barrio Latino on KYMN Radio, founded Rice County Neighbors United, or Vecinos Unidos, which is the main organization backing Viking Terrace residents today. Neighbors United laid the groundwork for Viking Terrace residents, community advocates, non-profits, church leaders, and city officials to work together to protect residents from Lakeshore Management. This kind of coalition building takes years and most manufactured housing communities across the country don’t have these supportive networks to tap into.
Since 2016, Mar has been part of the Northfield Human Rights Commission. While she was Vice Chair of the HRC, she was selected to serve on Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton’s Task Force on Housing. The task force produced a report in 2018 about how to make housing more affordable and accessible in Minnesota. Neighbors United was formed to help solve the problems identified by the HRC and the Housing Task Force on a community level.
I interviewed Mar about how she got involved in housing justice issues and founded Rice County Neighbors United.
Mar Valdecantos: "Yeah, the Rice County Neighbors United, Vecinos Unidos, was created in 2016 and became an official nonprofit in 2017… We were created as an advocacy group. So we work with low income people, immigrants, refugees, and, and whoever needs help. The work is connected t o many different areas of the human experience.
I mean, is, is whatever is needed. So if, if people need, um, help with businesses. We, we help with that. If people need help with housing, we help with that. So we do different things and we have, um, different, um, areas where we work. It's a very small nonprofit, so we don't have salaries, we don't have big budgets.
And, and, but we, even as volunteers, we do a lot of work."
Neighbors United was formed in 2016 because of a Northfield landlord who owned an apartment building complex called Northfield Estates. As a member of the HRC, Mar had been conducting community outreach about housing concerns at a local church and she heard complaints again and again about the living conditions at Northfield Estates. At the time, the city was wary of getting involved too directly in what they saw as a dispute between a private business owner and tenants. But when Mar and her friend, co-founder of Neighbors United Lucy González Mirón, were invited by residents to visit Northfield Estates, they knew the situation required city intervention.
Many apartments were infested with cockroaches, water was dripping through ceilings, and some residents had sinks and plumbing that had been broken for months despite repeated complaints to the landlord.
Mar Valdecantos: "It was very clear we needed to create an advocacy group. If the city cannot do that part of advocacy for people; we had to do it. And so we created the organization around housing issues because of that apartment building. So we went, uh, cockroaches everywhere, repairs that didn't happen, um, very, very bad situation. And so I, I sent messages to everybody in the City Council and so forth. So the city started to move into, now we have to do something."
According to Mar, it took a lot of pushing, but after Mayor Rhonda Pownell and other city officials visited the apartments themselves, it became clear that the City of Northfield needed more tools to be able to hold landlords accountable when necessary.
In 2017, the city imposed one-time immediate mandatory inspections on all units at Northfield Estates, though even that wasn’t enough to resolve all the issues. Mar and Neighbors United continued to push for housing justice and eventually city officials responded by crafting a new rental ordinance.
On April 5, 2022, ironically one day before Lakeshore officially bought Viking Terrace, the Northfield City Council unanimously passed the new rental ordinance meant to protect both landlords and residents, and ensure living conditions like those found at Northfield Estates don’t happen again.
Mar Valdecantos: “The city has changed a lot, their, their language, even with we, we were instrumental in the new rental ordinance, for instance, and they're talking about tenant, uh, rights and, and tenant protections.
They're like, wow, this is a revolution for the city of Northfield. I mean, 10 years ago, they, they, they didn't, I, when we were approaching them, they didn't have anything, you know, to go after bad landlords. Now we have.”
So when Lakeshore took over Viking Terrace on April 6 and immediately instituted a $65, or 15% lot rent increase, Mar was primed to help residents organize.
Mar Valdecantos: “I started receiving pictures of what was happening. People were receiving first, uh, a note saying, uh, we are selling the place and, and this is the new company.
So they received a letter from Lakeshore and it already indicated that it had a $65, um, increase in the rent. So that was the first thing, like, 'Hey, Welcome to our community. This is what we're doing.' Uh, and then, um, the Haans also sent a very short letter saying, oh, we're just, uh, we sold the park and you are like family to us and we wish you the best and we're gonna miss you and everything.
So it's like, wow, really? I mean, that, that's, that's really, really something. Right. Um, so that, that was the, the first two things that happened. And then it was kind of alerting everybody in the city saying, uh, we're coming out of, of very difficult years with the onset of the pandemic and everything, and nobody has savings.
$65 raise for people is a lot, and it is not the only place that this was happening in other places around town as well.”
On May 23rd the new Lakeshore lease was sent out. A Viking Terrace resident immediately sent the lease to Mar.
Mar Valdecantos: “I read the whole thing and I started distributing to people in town. This is, um, this is horrendous. I mean, the, the, the, this cannot be even real.”
The 35 pages of rules included expected things like requirements to maintain homes and yards. But there were also rules like the following:
“Vegetable gardens are prohibited except where prior written approval… has been obtained.”
“Lot maintenance which is to be performed by the Resident includes fallen tree or limb removal, limb trimming, fertilizing, and root trimming or removal.”
“No weight benches, trampolines, swing sets, pools, fire pits, outdoor exercise equipment or other outdoor recreational equipment… are permitted.” Though this rule said current residents could get permission from the Community Manager to have these items, the Community Manager sent out violation letters for these items instead.
Toddler pools are allowed, but residents were cited for not emptying and putting away the pools after “each and every use.”
“Residents, occupants, and guests are not permitted to play… in the yards of other residents or play ball in the Community streets.” Skateboarding is also prohibited.
“All overnight guests… must be registered by their resident host at the office during normal office hours… Failure to register your guest will subject the guest to immediate removal from the Community. Guests must notify the office upon departure.”
And if you’ll remember, the new lease was accompanied by a letter from the Community Manager saying that whether residents signed it or not, they would be bound by these rules in 60 days.
Northfield City Councilor George Zuccolotto, someone you’ll hear a lot more from later, remembered when his family received the new lease from Lakeshore.
George Zuccolotto: “I was watching my father go over and just his face was, was like, what? Um, you could see it of just the amount of rules we had never had these many rules.
You know, the, the original lease was one piece of paper. Um, I think it was double-sided maybe, but if that, you know, and just the amount of rules, uh, was overwhelming.”
George’s father, Jorge, had already signed a lease with the Haans when he bought his home 13 years ago and he was not required to sign a new one despite what Lakeshore said. Manufactured homeowners, in some ways, have greater legal protections than regular renters because most people in manufactured home parks rent the land their home is on, but own the home itself. This is true in Viking Terrace where only two homes are rented by the park owners to renters. All the other homes are owned, and most of them have been paid off, so families are only paying lot rent and utilities. Despite stereotypes of manufactured housing and people who live there being “mobile,” manufactured homes are not built to survive a move after they’ve been installed at a park. Homeowners buy so-called mobile homes as permanent housing for themselves and even for future generations. That’s why Minnesota law says that manufactured home owners never need to sign a new lease. As a result, when a park owner adjusts park rules, they cannot make “substantial modifications” to the rules that residents agreed to when they first bought their homes. So, in the case of Viking Terrace, Lakeshore can have new homeowners who move into the park sign this new lease with new rules, but they cannot force people already in the park to sign it.
To add insult to injury, even if the new rules could be applied to current Viking Terrace residents, Lakeshore’s Community Manager sent out violation letters before the rules were even supposed to take effect. Community members felt harassed and confused by the combination of receiving violation letters for sometimes trivial issues while at the same time having the threat of eviction hanging over their heads if they didn’t take the violation letters and new rules seriously.
Virginia Bravo, a Viking Terrace resident, described to me the frustrating experiences she had with the Lakeshore Community Manager, Monique. Though Minnesota law is clear that park owners are responsible for maintaining park property, including the trees, Lakeshore tried to foist that responsibility onto residents as Virginia experienced first hand.
Virginia Bravo: "The first notice I got was two pictures. She did not specifically say exactly what it was she wanted me to correct…. and knowing from all the new rules… they literally want nothing in the yard.
I'm like, Well, let's just start cleaning. Just let's get everything out, I guess. Then I got a second notice after there was a lot of cleaning, and the day before I got the second notice, Monique had called me and she said that she just wanted me to know that she noticed. We really cleaned our yard up and it was looking nice.
She says, but I just noticed just one branch in your yard. And I said, It's because the tree is half dead and huge branches are falling almost daily. One hit my son-in-law and I had a big branch probably a month and a half ago, about three in the morning. One over over half the length of my mobile home slammed down on the roof of my trailer and they won't cut the tree down or trim it or whatever they need to do with it.
And so the day after she had said that the yard was looking nice except for that branch, that's when I got the next. Uh, notice in the windshield wiper in my car. And this one had, um, one picture and she circled with yellow highlighter, the one branch that fell off the tree and a small little pile of leaves very small.”
Escalation by the company continued throughout late spring and early summer. Residents received threatening violation letters throughout May and June; sometimes multiple letters were sent to one household, despite the new rules supposedly not going into effect until 60 days after the lease was distributed. Since the lease was distributed on May 23rd, which we know because it was signed and dated by the Community Manager, the rules, according to Lakeshore, were not in effect until July 22nd.
Adding to the urgency and fear of the residents was Lakeshore’s reputation online. When I first heard that Viking Terrace residents were concerned about their new owners I did what anyone would do and Googled the company. Lakeshore’s page on the Better Business Bureau website is full of complaints from residents in parks they own across the country. I would later spend hours going through Lakeshore park Google reviews, noticing the trends of complaints and even identifying fake positive reviews left by Lakeshore employees. Lakeshore’s average rating on Indeed.com as of this recording is 1.9 out of five stars based on 71 reviews by their own employees. Staff report being overworked and undervalued while residents report through the Better Business Bureau and Google reviews of their parks that Lakeshore cut amenities and jacked up prices, even during the pandemic.
Mar Googled Lakeshore too, and had read about what they’d done in other parks, so as soon as she heard about the new Viking leases, she knew she had to act quickly.
Mar reached out to the pastors at Emmaus Church, which is close to Viking Terrace, to ask if they could use the church to hold a residents meeting there. Emmaus would become an important meeting place and source of solidarity for Viking Terrace in the months to come. On June 14th, more than 200 residents and community leaders packed into Emmaus to share their experiences with Lakeshore and hear what Mar had to say.
Mar Valdecantos: “I was addressing the crowd saying, you know, I read this, this cannot stand. This is horrible. Um, we're gonna seek legal counsel. Um, and I'm gonna find lawyers that can help. That was super scary, um, to say to everybody, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not the Attorney General, but I said to everybody, we have 60 days to sign this, don't sign anything.
So that, that was the message to everybody. Hold on to the papers. Don't sign anything. We'll seek, uh, council from the lawyers. So the, the approach would be, I knew already the president from the Housing Justice Center and SMRLS as well. So it was contacting both of them and see who will want or can help us.”
After reaching out to the Housing Justice Center and the Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, or SMRLS, it was the Housing Justice Center that stepped in on behalf of Viking Terrace residents.
Margaret Kaplan: “Uh, so the Housing Justice Center is a legal and policy advocacy organization that's dedicated to the preservation and production of affordable housing and protection of the civil rights of people who need affordable places to call home.”
Margaret Kaplan: “My name is Margaret Kaplan and I am the President of the Housing Justice Center.”
Margaret is a powerhouse who has rooted her legal career in hands-on community organizing.
And when Mar called a second meeting at Emmaus the next week, Margaret was there to hear the concerns of residents directly.
I asked Margaret what she heard from residents and advocates. What were the biggest issues that stood out to her? What made The Housing Justice Center get involved?
Margaret Kaplan: “So there were a couple of different things. One, they were trying to get everybody in the community to sign a new lease agreement, which they can't make people sign new lease agreements because they already have lease agreements.
And so, you know, the new park owner became basically the successor in interest of those old lease agreements. The second was they were trying to impose a very substantial set of rules. And, uh, those rules were a substantial modification of people's, uh, prior rules and many of them were taking away material rights and privileges, or were imposing additional fees on folks.
The third issue was that even if they could have these new rules, which they can't, they were also sending people violation notices of those new rules and only giving people very short periods of time to correct them. Usually it was like five or 10 days as opposed to the 30 days that people are entitled to.
They also were not being specific about what the rule violation was. So the notices were really vague. They weren't necessarily always dated. And, uh, it would show pictures of the property with things circled on it, but it wouldn't clarify what needed to get changed.”
For Margaret, it was clear that Lakeshore was likely violating multiple Minnesota laws. However, the Housing Justice Center only works on behalf of groups of people or organizations, so if Viking Terrace wanted their help they were going to have to form a Resident Association.
Margaret Kaplan: “We do what's called impact litigation. Uh, which means that we are typically not working with individuals on issues, but instead representing people in collective actions in order to make larger scale changes. Um, and so sometimes it means we represent organizations.”
Teresa Garcia Delcompare, The Housing Justice Center’s first full-time Community Organizer, was assigned to support Viking Terrace residents in forming the association.
Teresa Garcia Delcompare: “My name is Teresa Garcia and I'm a community organizer with the Housing Justice Center.”
Teresa has a soft voice and readily shares that she sometimes gets nervous speaking to crowds, but she has become one of Viking Terrace’s greatest defenders. Advocates like Teresa work with communities like Viking Terrace to educate residents about their rights and help them stand up for themselves and organize. The importance of having someone like Teresa at your side can’t be overstated. She’s someone who has lived through the same experiences she’s now helping people overcome. She’s someone who answers residents’ calls at any hour and who shows up consistently to meetings and events big and small.
It takes a lot to shock Teresa, who herself has lived in manufactured home parks with exploitative owners. But for her, a few of the rules Lakeshore was trying to impose really stood out.
Teresa Garcia Delcompare: “Having a curfew. Um, That was one of the things that impacted me, having them ask for their pets to be removed. And hearing a family say that even they were told to, Well, if you can't get rid of it, then kill your dog. You know, just put 'em down. That was the hardest thing. Um, pets become our family."
The Lakeshore lease banned seven breeds of dogs including German Shepherds and Pit Bulls, supposedly because of the “aggressive behavior” of the breeds. It is not uncommon for manufactured home parks or other privately owned communities to place restrictions on the type of pet and breeds allowed. But again, these Viking Terrace residents had permission from the Haans to have their dogs and telling them now to get rid of their family pet was not only a substantial modification of the rules they previously agreed to, but also cruel.
Teresa Garcia Delcompare: “The family that really impacted me was… There was one lady: She was told to get rid of her pets and she suffers from anxiety and other issues. And, um, she cried to me and asked me, I don't wanna lose my pets.
And that completely destroyed me because I have. I have kids with disabilities. I understand what people's issues are, um, and how important it is to have your emotional support pet, you know, your service dog, and for someone to come and tell you that, that breaks you completely. That's another trauma that families don't need.”
Teresa heard the stress that adults and children alike were experiencing in Viking Terrace when she and Margaret Kaplan attended the second gathering of residents at Emmaus Church on June 22nd.
Teresa Garcia Delcompare: “Just seeing their faces and their fear and their stress and hearing them say, ‘Oh, mom, they're by the window. Mom, they're taking pictures again’ and hearing the, you know, this family telling me their kids are stressed and, and nervous.
Hey, no one should feel that way in their own home at all. So, um, they're not treated with value and respect. So it hurts because I've been through the same thing.”
At this second meeting, Margaret and Teresa explained to those gathered that Viking Terrace’s next step to protect themselves would be to form a Resident Association.
According to Minnesota law, a Resident Association is “an organization that has the written permission of the owners of at least 51 percent of the manufactured homes in the park to represent them, and which is organized for the purpose of resolving matters relating to living conditions in the manufactured home park.”
A Resident Association could not only help unite Viking Terrace residents and streamline communication between residents and management, but if the residents ever needed formal legal representation, the Housing Justice Center could represent the association.
For Northfield City Councilor George Zuccolotto, forming a Resident Association was a natural next step for his community. At those first two meetings at Emmaus he felt moved by how his neighbors came together to share information and support each other.
George Zuccolotto: "And people were so scared and people were so worried. But to put the negative feelings aside when people really stood up and people were really like, we need to do something about this. And people came with papers and things and, and stories. I mean it's, for me, it was really like a burden was lifted off my shoulders. I was so, maybe ignorant in thinking I would have to face this thing alone, but then I was like ‘oh of course, I have my community.’"
I was at the third resident meeting at Emmaus, on June 28th, and recorded it.
[Soundbite of Mar and Teresa speaking at the meeting plays]
The goal of the meeting was to get everyone on the same page about why forming a Resident Association was important and to collect signatures. As I researched more for this podcast about manufactured home parks and parks owned by Lakeshore it would become more and more impressive how quickly and cohesively Viking Terrace residents mobilized. That night, on June 28th, organizers and residents collected most of the necessary signatures of homeowners and the rest were collected through community door knocking efforts in the next few days. It took less than three weeks to go from the initial community meeting to collecting the necessary signatures to form an association.
It’s rare that resident frustration with management in manufactured home parks actually coalesces into true organizing power, but in Viking Terrace the timing, the energy, and the people came together in a perfect storm. After suffering through a pandemic and dealing with inflation and a housing crisis, Viking Terrace residents, many of whom work two or three jobs, saw the writing on the wall when Lakeshore raised their lot rent 15% and tried to impose their new rules.
George Zuccolotto: "This is our struggle. And not just mine. This is everyone's struggle. And it didn't feel like we had like anyone pushing us to do it. Like we had anyone making us do it. Of course people were, you know, guiding us, but it didn't feel like anyone was like shepherding us into like making decisions and stuff like that.”
On July 6th Viking Terrace residents elected the seven board members of their new association: Jorge Zuccolotto, Dawn Delacruz, Virginia Bravo, Nathaly Sanchez, Danielle Gates, Sol León Brunis, and Gregorio León Brunis.
Jorge Zuccolotto, father of Northfield City Councilor George Zuccolotto, was elected board president.
Jorge Zuccolotto: "My name is, uh, Jorge Zuccolotto um, um, I've lived in Northfield for the last 22 years. And, um, I work for First Choice Shuttle which is a taxi transportation we have in town. and I've lived in Viking Terrace for about 13 years."
Jorge knows Viking Terrace isn’t alone in its struggles against corporate owners and he knows it’s the corporations that have been coming out on top.
Jorge Zuccolotto: "This has happened to us. This also happened to a thousand people around the nation. You know, this corporation's coming around. Try to squish as much money as they can from the poor people.
And when they can no longer squish money from them, they just, the people have to move out. They can take the trailer with them, because like I said, a lot of times there's old trailers. They have to just leave it that behind them, you know, they can claim them and then fix them or move a new one in and get new people in.
They've been doing this for years already and, um, that's how they make money and they're gonna continue to make money on. On the, on the people on the bottom.”
But Jorge isn’t intimidated and Viking Terrace residents and advocates are committed to standing up for the community no matter what.
Jorge Zuccolotto: "The reason I took this position is to, you know, give them a voice to, you know, whatever is in me, you know, to step up and fight. If we’re talking about a fight, a legal fight, put a face to it, you know, put a voice to it."
Forming a Resident Association was just the first step in the fight to protect Viking Terrace’s affordability and livability for its families. And though it was exciting to see how quickly that step was achieved, Viking Terrace residents are not under any illusions that resisting Lakeshore will be easy.
This isn’t the first time a community has formed a Resident Association as a backlash to Lakeshore’s management style. In a future episode you’ll meet residents of a park in Monticello Minnesota who faced much worse obstacles and legal harassment from Lakeshore when they formed a Resident Association last summer.
The Meadows Resident 1: "'No, you don't have a Resident Association and you can't call yourself the president of it... we're not going to give you that information until you give us every single name that's on that list; everyone who signed.' And that came from the lawyer and he also sent me a cease and dissist letter saying that I was harassing the staff and I was doing all this stuff that I wasn't doing."
The Meadows Resident 2: "No notice at all: my neighbor telling me something is happening at your house, the sheriff is there, your doors are getting kicked in. These guys have taken me down to a level that I wouldn't wish on anyone where you startle awake in the middle of the night. I look around me and wonder if people are following me."
I’ve found communities that have tried to organize against Lakeshore in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida, and New York. But at the end of the day, Lakeshore is an experienced manufactured home park management company with a proven strategy of gaining resident compliance and extracting park wealth: an effective combination of massive lot rent increases, targeting individual resident organizers with legal harassment and eviction, and simply waiting until residents are too exhausted to resist anymore. It takes deep wells of commitment, money, and time for residents to fight back against exploitative park owners. In this series you’ll see what it takes to turn bubbling resentment and resistance just under the surface into an organized and effective campaign to protect residents’ rights.
[previews for Episode 2 play]
In the next episode we’ll explore how the national housing crisis has touched Northfield, how local organizations, city officials, and the Minnesota Attorney General have supported residents and what happened when Lakeshore executives got involved in Viking Terrace.
Not Mobile is a production of KYMN Radio. This series is produced, reported, written, recorded, edited, sound designed and hosted by me, Cait Kelley. Thank you to all those who have supported this podcast including my family, KYMN Radio, and of course my mentor at KYMN, News Director Rich Larson. Thank you to everyone who has shared their knowledge and their stories with me over the course of my research. Featured music courtesy of APM Music.