Parakeet Communities Lawsuit: Auburn Rent Hikes and Class Claims

The Parakeet Communities lawsuit is a class action filed in July 2024 by more than 100 residents of two Auburn, Massachusetts mobile home parks, accusing the Maryland-based investment firm of raising rents by roughly 40%, withholding legally required disclosures, and violating the state’s Manufactured Housing Act.¹ A Worcester Superior Court judge denied Parakeet’s motion to dismiss in March 2025, and the case is moving forward.²

Who Parakeet Is and What It Bought

Parakeet Communities LLC purchased American Mobile Home Park and Whispering Pines Estates, both on Washington Street in Auburn, in 2022.¹ American has 38 units; Whispering Pines is a separate nearby community.³ Many residents are seniors or people living on fixed incomes.

The parks house two kinds of tenants, and the distinction matters to the case. Owner-tenants own their manufactured homes and lease only the land underneath. Renter-tenants rent both the home and the lot from Parakeet. State manufactured housing protections clearly cover the first group; whether they cover the second became a central dispute.

Parakeet describes itself as bringing an “institutional approach” and “operational efficiencies of scale” to manufactured housing, with a strategy of acquiring under-managed parks and raising rents to capture what it calls “positive mark-to-market.”⁴ The firm owns and manages 47 manufactured housing communities and RV parks nationwide.⁵

The Rent Increases at the Center of the Case

In late 2023, Parakeet sent lease offers effective January 1, 2024 with sharp increases. According to the complaint, renter-tenants saw monthly payments jump by roughly $345 to $395, from under $1,000 to $1,315, an increase of about 40%. Owner-tenants who lease only the land saw lot fees rise by approximately $115, from under $500 to roughly $575 or $615 per month.⁶

The lawsuit alleges the new rates exceed fair market value. It points to a comparable privately owned mobile home community in Auburn charging renter-tenants $950 per month, and notes that American Mobile Home Park residents were paying $900 or less as recently as 2022.⁶

Named plaintiff Amy Case said Parakeet’s actions “stretched our finances past the limit and created constant fear that we will lose our homes.”⁷ Residents organized a neighborhood food bank to help cope with the higher cost of living.¹

What the Lawsuit Alleges

The complaint was filed on July 2, 2024 by five named plaintiffs — Amy Case, Charles Sveden, Maria Velez, Walter Wassell, and Mark Raymond — under the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act and the state’s Manufactured Housing Act. It names Parakeet Communities LLC along with two Maryland-registered affiliates, Whispering Pines MHC MA LLC and American MHC LLC, and alleges Parakeet exercises “pervasive control” over both.⁶

The claims fall into several categories.

Non-uniform rent increases. Massachusetts law requires rent changes to apply uniformly to residents in the same class. The complaint alleges some owner-tenants received $115 increases while others received $105 increases, a discrepancy the plaintiffs call “presumptively unfair.”⁶

Failure to offer five-year leases at fair market rates. State regulations require community owners to offer both new and existing tenants a five-year lease at fair market rates. The lawsuit alleges Parakeet limited new leases to one-year terms and that the five-year offers made to owner-tenants included automatic $100 annual increases that were not at fair market rates.⁶

Missing disclosures. State law requires community owners to provide detailed written disclosures, including the identities of owners and resident agents, itemized fees, and operative community rules. The complaint alleges Parakeet failed to provide most of these.⁶

Deceptive lease documents. According to plaintiffs’ attorneys, some lease offers stated in capitalized text that rents would remain the same, while other sections of the same document indicated rate increases.¹

Unapproved community rules. The plaintiffs allege Parakeet distributed community rules in November 2023 that had never been approved by the Attorney General’s office, as state law requires, and falsely presented them as the governing rules of the parks.⁶

Illegal attorney’s fees clause. The leases allegedly allowed the landlord to recover attorney’s fees without a reciprocal right for the tenant, which violates state regulations.⁶

The plaintiffs are seeking financial compensation and a court order requiring Parakeet to comply with all state regulations governing manufactured housing communities.¹

How Parakeet Has Responded

Parakeet’s attorney, Robert Kraus, disputed the plaintiffs’ pricing claims, arguing that the parks’ rents remain competitive. “If you look at the rental market in a place like Monson or Auburn and you try to find a comparable rental space … surely it’ll be more expensive than what they’re paying at the respective manufactured housing community,” Kraus told GBH News.¹

Earlier, in a February 2024 response to a pre-litigation letter, Kraus said Parakeet would send revised lease agreements and written disclosures to owner-tenants. But he refused to make any revisions for renter-tenants, arguing that homes owned by Parakeet itself “are not within the protections afforded by the manufactured home statute or regulations.”⁸ That coverage question then became a central issue in the motion to dismiss.

According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Parakeet was “unwilling to offer reasonable settlement terms” before the suit was filed, and eviction proceedings were initiated against some residents who had complained.⁹

Where the Case Stands

Parakeet moved to dismiss, arguing that Massachusetts manufactured housing protections do not apply to renter-tenants and that the plaintiffs had failed to allege legally recognizable harm. On March 5, 2025, Judge Daniel M. Wrenn denied the motion. The court ruled that renter-plaintiffs are entitled to protections under the Manufactured Housing Act and that the complaint adequately alleged harm, including economic harm from the challenged rent rates and emotional distress from the threat of eviction.²

The case number is 248SCV00740 in Worcester Superior Court.² As of the most recent available information, the case remains pending, with no reported class certification, settlement, or trial date. Attorney Jacob Love of Lawyers for Civil Rights has indicated that the class could potentially be expanded to include residents of Parakeet’s community in Monson, Massachusetts, where similar rent increases have been reported.¹⁰

Why This Case Matters Beyond Auburn

Mobile home residents occupy an unusual position in housing law. Many own their homes outright but lease the land underneath, and moving a manufactured home typically costs thousands of dollars when it’s feasible at all. That dynamic gives park owners significant leverage, a reality Massachusetts law explicitly acknowledges: the state’s Manufactured Housing Act was designed to protect residents who occupy what courts have recognized as an “ineffective bargaining position.”¹¹

Corporate ownership of manufactured housing has grown fast. Institutional investors represented about 23% of manufactured housing community purchases by 2021, up from 13% during 2017–2019, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that corporate acquisitions in the sector totaled roughly $9.4 billion in 2021. Eviction filings typically rise by about 40% in the months following a park’s sale to a new owner.¹² Auburn itself lacks a rent control provision for manufactured housing, though the town held a hearing in 2024 on whether to adopt one.⁹ The March 2025 ruling that renter-tenants at a corporate-owned park can invoke the Manufactured Housing Act is one of the first substantive judicial answers in Massachusetts to a question that will surface again as more parks change hands.

1
WGBH. Residents Say Owner of Auburn Mobile Home Parks Has Made Life a Living Nightmare
2
Mass.gov. MH Commission Minutes
3
Telegram & Gazette. Auburn Mobile Home Park Residents Seek Legal Aid Over Hikes, Neglect
4
Yahoo Finance. Madison Realty Capital Originates $114M Loan to Parakeet Communities
5
Rent Manager. Customer Story: Parakeet Communities
6
Lawyers for Civil Rights. Trailer Park Class Action Complaint
7
Lawyers for Civil Rights. Trailer Park Residents File Class Action
8
Lawyers for Civil Rights. Chapter 93A Demand Letter on Behalf of Mobile Home Residents
9
WBUR. Auburn Trailer Park Tenants File Lawsuit Over Rent Hike
10
MassLive. Rising Lot Rents Imperil Affordability of Mobile Homes; Some Residents Are Fighting Back
11
Mass.gov. Attorney General’s Guide to Manufactured Housing
12
Realtor.com. Mobile Home Trailer Park Rent Increase Under New Owner