A private equity firm bought this Iowa mobile home park. Now, residents say it’s sinking into the ground.

A Utah-based private equity firm is slowly selling off its Iowa mobile home parks after years of resident complaints. In one Iowa City park that Havenpark Communities still owns, residents report ongoing issues with water contamination and soil erosion beneath homes.

Pamela Rodriguez paid more than $1,000 to level the ground underneath her mobile home when she moved into Lake Ridge Estates. Just a year and a half later, the 68-year-old worries she’ll need to do it again.

When it rains, water floods the land under her trailer, washing away soil. Her bathroom floor has cracked from the shifting ground. Gaps have opened beneath her home where earth has eroded away.

“I cannot afford this and should not have to,” Rodriguez said. “The trailer goes up and down and I’ve got a broken floor in my bathroom right now because it has moved so much.”

Rodriguez is one of 425 households living in Lake Ridge Estates, a mobile home park just south of Iowa City. While residents own their homes, the land beneath them belongs to Utah-based Havenpark Communities, formerly Havenpark Capital, which purchased the property for $11.5 million in 2022.

Since the sale, residents like Rodriguez report two simultaneous crises: contaminated drinking water and soil erosion that’s causing homes to sink.

Pamela Rodriguez, 68, is a resident of Lake Ridge Estates. She worries that the erosion under her home will require mitigation she can’t afford.

Contaminated water persists

The park’s water supply has repeatedly tested above safe limits for manganese, a metal that can cause neurological problems in infants and young children. 

In 2024, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources issued a health advisory about elevated levels of manganese in the drinking water. Havenpark blamed a “valve malfunction,” which it replaced. But the following summer, manganese levels in the drinking water exceeded healthy drinking levels. The company was still distributing bottled water and instructing residents not to give tap water to infants under six months old due to persistently high manganese levels.

For residents living in the park, water issues persist.  

Iowa Starting Line reached out to Havenpark about the concerns brought by residents. A spokesperson from Invariant, a firm that specializes in “reputation management,” responded on behalf of Havenpark.

“We successfully addressed the problem by hiring a Grade 4 Operator and actively flushing the water during warm months,” the statement read. 

“You never know when you turn the faucet on if you’re going to get clear water, or if you’re going to get rust-colored water,” said John Hickson, a 70-year-old resident who says he won’t let his dog drink the water. “We’ve got a tub in the back, and you can’t see the bottom some days.”

Rodriguez described water outages during the holidays and water that “turns pure brown and stays brown for two days,” ruining laundry loads.

Rich Robbins, 82, has lived in Lake Ridge for 20 years—since before Havenpark’s purchase. He said he’s become used to buying bottled water. While the water problem predates Havenpark’s ownership, he said it’s become worse under its management.

“This water is no good,” Robbins said. “I can taste it. It’s foul. I can smell it too.” He described rust coming out of the pipes that makes it “not fit to use.”

While state regulators can penalize well water sources for arsenic or nitrate contamination, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources does not have similar authority to require water systems to remove manganese or find different water sources.

John Hickson, 70, and his dog Ella are residents of Lake Ridge Estates. He and his wife say the struggle to afford Havenpark’s rent increases has led them to pursue additional jobs.

Havenpark denies erosion issues. Residents, former manager say otherwise.

Havenpark disputes residents’ erosion concerns, claiming Lake Ridge Estates has no such problems.

According to the statement, safety is a “top priority” for the operator. Havenpark claimed it hired an engineer to review the “alleged erosion concerns,” and that its engineer concluded that the park’s overall drainage infrastructure and topography appear to be functioning “as intended” and are “not causing any erosion or foundation issues.” 

However, one of Havenpark’s own former managers of Lake Ridge Estates contradicted the company’s statement. Rachel Carney managed Lake Ridge from 2022 until she was terminated last September. She told Iowa Starting Line that she had received numerous complaints from residents. Carney confirmed that water quality issues were severe and the erosion problems continue to pose serious structural risks for residents. 

“Their water is not something I would drink. It’s not something I would give to my kids nor children at a daycare,” Carney said. “I’ve seen pictures. I was sent photos and it was very concerning because there was no reason the water needed to look like that.”

Carney described water that would range “from dingy to tinge of yellow to brown to almost black.” She filed incident reports with the company about both issues, but said the company’s response was inadequate.

“The more I tried to dig into it, the more I was getting told that I needed to back off. Or that I was more concerned about the residents than I was the integrity of the company,” Carney said.

Built on unstable ground

Lake Ridge Estates sits on a former gravel quarry. Street names like Mineral Point Lane and Sandstone Road still hint at the site’s history. Additional soil was brought in to prepare the land for development in the 1990s.

In recent years, residents have complained that land washes out from under their homes. Carney said as a manager, she documented at least six homes with severe erosion problems, including photographs showing homes starting to fall off their support piers.

“Of the homes that I started doing incident reports on, only two of them got fixed,” she said.

Hickson described trailers where “six inches to a foot of their skirting is already buried in the ground from just the ground moving. The axles are buried already.”

Rodriguez’s home has gaps underneath where soil has eroded, and doors won’t close properly. Water floods under and around her trailer during rain.

Robbins described erosion along his trailer where water “washes things away” during storms. “It comes down from the hillside,” he said. “And when it gets on this side of the trailer, it looks like a river going through the street.”

Rising rents, declining services

While infrastructure problems have mounted, lot rents have climbed and services have been cut.

Hickson’s rent has increased $110 over two years—a sharp departure from the roughly $5 annual increases under the previous owner, Iowa-based Wolf Construction. Rodriguez now pays $825 monthly, more than half her Social Security check.

“We used to have free, basic cable TV. That disappeared,” Hickson said. Park security guards were eliminated. Trash pickup was cut in half. And maintenance requests often go unanswered, residents said.

This pattern is common under private equity ownership. Firms buy mobile home parks, slash services, and raise rents to increase property value before reselling at a profit. 

“They keep raising lot rent for no reason at all,” Robbins said. “And they take everything away from us.”

He described being charged a $50 late fee despite the office having his rent check in hand. “How in the hell could it be late?” he said. When he complained, “they said I had to pay $50 or else get evicted.”

Iowa law requires 90 days’ notice for rent increases, but the state has no substantive limits on how much a landlord can increase rent. 

Havenpark Communities owns several mobile home properties in Iowa. In 2019, the company drew criticism for rent increases ranging from 24% to 69% at its Iowa parks, prompting a letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren and then-Congressman Dave Loebsack calling the practices predatory.

In recent years, the company has sold off several properties including those in Indianola, North Liberty, Waukee, Huxley, and West Branch. 

“I’d like to see them sell it to somebody else,” Hickson said. “I think they’re just an investment corporation. They buy up a trailer court. They don’t make any improvements. They raise the lot rent. They make their money. And they get out.”