Residents In Foreclosed Mobile Home Park Suffer Water Shutoff As Rent Skimming Ex-Landlord Pocketed Rents While Stiffing City On H2O Bill

In Great Falls, Montana, the Great Falls Tribune reports:

• Residents in a mobile home park [...] had their water service shut off [...] Wednesday by the city of Great Falls. Tenants were worried and upset by the shutoff, which affected a dozen occupied mobile homes and more than two-dozen people. "We paid our rent," resident Jessica Chandler said. "We have no place to move."
• Chandler said the former property owner, Larry Frates, stopped paying the city water bill in October, and tenants were threatened with a water shutoff this spring. Chandler said the rent payment includes water service. Frates could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
• City Attorney James Santoro said he advised the city's Water Department to give tenants extra time before the water was shut off. A recent notice said the city still was owed $5,466 in payments for water, Chandler said. "We've had to haul water to use our toilet," she added. "It's just like camping out in a big trailer with no plumbing."
• Chandler said she called various social services agencies, but added that tenants have received little help so far in finding new places to live. New landowner Corey Welter of Billings said he obtained the land in mid-February through a sheriff's sale and a foreclosure, but said Frates still owns the mobile homes on the property.

For more, see Ex-landlord's water woes leave renters high and dry.

For story update, see Mobile homes receive emergency water:

• Residents of an ill-fated mobile home park [...] in Great Falls received emergency deliveries of water Friday, but a long-term fix for their predicament remained elusive. [...] The Salvation Army was at the park Friday morning providing water and clean-up kits. "This is certainly a disaster for the families involved," said Jesse E. Oldham Jr., emergency and disaster services coordinator for the Salvation Army, in a press release. The Cascade City-County Health Department asked the Salvation Army to help the residents.