Broadmoor Valley is a manufactured home park located off of Highway 23 and Saratoga street in Marshall. Citing years of poor road conditions and unsafe housing, some residents of the park have worked with the Minnesota Attorney General's office to sue the property manager, Schierholz and Associates.
On August 27, Minnesota State Attorney General, Keith Ellison visited Broadmoor Valley, a manufactured home park in Marshall, to announce a lawsuit against the Park's owner/operator Schierholz and Associates. Paul Schierholz is the president and CEO of Colorado-based Schierholz and Associates.
The lawsuit alleges that Schierholz "failed to maintain clean, orderly and sanitary conditions," creating "unsafe, unhealthy, and undignified living conditions." The owner of the park was not in attendance at the meeting on the 27th. Schierholz and Associates did file a response to the lawsuit on September 16, 2021. In a brief email to Compass, Paul Schierholz said that, "The answer speaks for itself, no facts presented. We have been advised by counsel, 'no comment.'"
A number of Broadmoor Valley residents started organizing in 2018, unofficially calling themselves, the Broadmoor Valley Residents Association. Jesus Hernandez, he goes by Chuy, has lived in the park for 21 years with his family and is the president of the Broadmoor Valley Residents United. The group had to change the name from Broadmoor Valley Residents Association to Broadmoor Valley Residents United after Schierholz found out they were organizing, registered the name Broadmoor Valley Residents Association himself and threatened legal action if the group didn't stop using it according to the lawsuit.
"We met Pablo Tapia from the Asamblea de Derechos Civiles, translates to Assembly for Civil Rights," said Hernandez. "We know that this isn't a unique situation here in Marshall. We have this going on throughout the state, throughout the country. There's a lot of issues with mobile home parks. So he helped us organize and become an association."
Hernandez said that he didn't realize they could go further than bringing their issues to the city of Marshall. Tapia helped connect the residents with the attorney general's office, where they alleged that over the course of many years, the owner has done separate unlawful acts.
"One is that the owner has a duty and obligation to maintain the roads and the infrastructure," said Attorney General Ellison during a visit to the park. "We argue they have not done that by just letting the roads deteriorate, potholes, things like that, making it so that the buses, school buses can't even come here."
The day that Attorney General Ellison visited the park, there were a number of maintenance people smoothing over some of the potholes with tractors and fence-like grates. Hernandez said that for the past, maybe year and a half, they do that about once a month. "It's not really fix, it's just a way to try to ... pass the inspections and stuff," said Hernandez. "So that's why they do that. They bring that gravel, they smooth the roads and make them look a little bit better. We don't want fancy roads, you know, we just want them to keep them up to code."
I met Hernandez and Dave Cornielson, another resident of the park, for a tour. The lawsuit said that years ago, the bus service serving the Marshall Public School District asked that the parks roads be maintained. Instead of fixing the roads, Schierholz banned the buses from the park, an accusation Schierholz neither admitted nor denied in the response.
"Instead of working a deal with them or working something out to fix that situation, he blamed the buses for the roads being in that condition," said Hernandez. "So he kind of just turned it around and said, 'well, it's your fault that the roads are this way.' And truly, I've lived here for 21 years, I've never seen them do any repavement or anything like that."
Hernandez and Cornielson showed one unoccupied house that had caught on fire. The attorney general's lawsuits said that it was investigated by the State Fire Marshal's Office and determined to be an electrical fire.
"And so that was a close call. ... Why was that house with the electrics or like the power service on when no one lived there for years? We don't know. So it's just crazy how, you know, those things we're dealing with. A lot of people don't know. That's one of the reasons why we started our association," said Hernandez. "We wanted to have a voice that was heard because a lot of us went individually to talk to the owner. I never got a chance to it. He closed his car door in my face once, but when people did actually talk to the management or the owner, they didn't get nothing in return. Sometimes they got retaliation in return."
Hernandez said that Schierholz has threatened to close the park and turn it into a truck stop, kicking out all of the people in the park's nearly 75 homes.
"The other part of the lawsuit is that the landlord has certain provisions in the ... leasing documents that are not lawful, having to do with late payments and things like that. Certain numbers of fees are capped. He's exceeded the caps on what you can charge people for late fees," said Attorney General Ellison. "So, these are the very guts of it — We're alleging consumer fraud, ... but basically it boils down to poor maintenance of the property, improper provisions in the leasing documents."
What started as a simple plea to maintain roads has evolved into a grassroots community effort, demanding dignity and living spaces. Hernandez said that he doesn't think that Schierholz is willing to work with them. And with aging infrastructure, he only sees one path forward.
"Ultimately, we want to become a co-op and own the park and fix everything that needs to be fixed. And I think that's gonna be the answer to all these problems that we are dealing with right now," Hernandez said.