John Lennox was weed whacking around a utility pole outside his home on Patriot Circle on Sept. 14 when it fell over and he felt a surge of electricity go through his body.
“I heard my friend yell out and I froze, and I fell down,” Lennox said. “I was electrocuted through my left foot.”
Lennox, who lives on Patriot Circle in the Mayflower Hills mobile home community, said the force was so strong that it blew his sneaker apart.
He was taken by ambulance to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, where he remained in the emergency department for eight hours before being discharged.
Ten weeks later, Lennox says, he still suffers from nausea. His story is the most dramatic in a series of complaints made by five residents of Mayflower Hills and two advocates for manufactured home communities. They say that Parakeet Communities, a national company that manages the 50-year-old park of about 50 homes, has been unresponsive to problems that range from faulty wiring to an oil leak.
Resident Ed Delaney said he asked for more than a year about exposed wires on his electric meter box. He said Parakeet recently sent someone to put putty around the faulty connection. Delaney said that Eversource told him that the meter is mounted too low.
Parakeet bought the park West of Manomet in February 2020 for $3.5 million under the name Mayflower Hills MHP LLC, with an address in Maryland. The seller was Mayflower MHC LLC, a company with a Wellesley address. Gregory C. Tanner, listed as the seller’s manager, signed the deed. Tanner is listed as founder and managing partner of Gates Street Capital, in Needham, which buys and sells multifamily real-estate properties.
Under Massachusetts law, residents of a manufactured home community must be given notice of an impending sale, and if at least 51 percent of the residents had previously notified the owner that they want to be told a buyer has made an offer, they must be given 45 days to match the offer, according to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s guide to manufactured home communities.
But residents were not notified prior to the sale of Mayflower.
Robin Roderick, who has lived in the park since 1983, said she was told three days after the sale that the community had new owners.
Jacqui Collins said she and other residents did not learn that Parakeet was the owner behind the shell company until 2022, two years after the deal closed. Even then, they found out only because Parakeet employees were walking around the grounds and told them.
Tanner did not respond to requests for comment.
Collins said that since Parakeet took over, maintenance problems have mounted.
“We have potholes galore,” she said.
A recent tour of the community revealed several potholes. One sits in front of the driveway of a disabled resident. Collins pointed to a depressed spot on Patriot Circle. She said it’s a sinkhole that had been improperly repaired by a driveway company hired by Parakeet. Collins said Parakeet told her three years ago that it was getting bids to repair it properly.
In its own rules distributed to tenants, Parakeet acknowledges its responsibility for potholes, but Collins said management told her potholes are the town’s responsibility. The town, however, said that because Patriot Circle is a private road, it is Parakeet’s responsibility. Jodie Volta, business manager for the town’s Department of Public Works, confirmed that the company is responsible.
For a long time, it was tough for residents to see those potholes in the dark. Collins said that for two years, the streetlights didn’t work. She said Parakeet repeatedly told her the lights are the utility’s responsibility, but Eversource told her it needed permission from Parakeet to make repairs. Eversource finally fixed the lights in October. Spokesperson Christopher McKinnon said the company only fixes streetlights after it is notified by the property owner.
Then there was the oil mess. In February, 150 gallons of fuel oil leaked from a tank behind Amanda Gordon-Crowley’s house. Gordon-Crowley said the day after a fuel delivery, she thought she smelled something.
“My husband and my dad went outside and they came running back and they said, ‘You need to call Churchill’s (Oil and Gas) right now!’” Gordon-Crowley said. “The oil tank’s leaking.”
Churchill’s was able to plug the leak, she said.
Gordon-Crowley and her husband have a rent-to-own agreement for the manufactured home with John Lennox, who sold them the home.
Gordon-Crowley said Parakeet insisted it was Lennox’s responsibility to clean up the mess.
“Come to find out that was a lie,” Gordon-Crowley said.
She said the attorney general’s office told her Parakeet had been informed that it was the company’s responsibility.
The tank and its concrete pad have since been removed, but Nicole Manfredi, director of constituent services for State Sen. Susan Moran, a Plymouth and Barnstable Democrat, told Collins that Parakeet is consulting with a company to lift and move the mobile home to enable cleanup of all the contaminated soil. Manfredi said the home has unpermitted additions that must be removed before a permit to lift and move it is issued. To remove the additions, Parakeet must first also obtain permission from the owner. That poses a challenge because there is a question as to who owns the home.
“It’s just in their hands, and all we can do is wait, which is very stressful and exhausting,” Gordon-Crowley said.
Gordon-Crowley, who has two children, ages 2 and 10, said Churchill’s put in a temporary tank to hold the remaining oil, but could not legally deliver more to a temporary tank.
That tank was taken out over the summer and Gordon-Crowley said she is waiting to hear from Parakeet about whether it plans to have the house lifted or moved.
Meantime, the family does not have a functioning heating system and is relying on space heaters.
Manfredi told Collins that there is a question as to whether Parakeet should pay for the removal of the unpermitted additions.
In many ways, the story of Mayflower Hills is one of finger pointing, with no one taking responsibility for the plight of residents.
Moran said in a statement that her office has “brought these safety and environmental issues to the attention of the Attorney General’s Office, as well as local and state health officials. It is paramount that all residents have a safe place to call home and I look forward to seeing this resolved in a timely manner.”
Collins said the town’s Board of Health has been notified of several problems at the park. Karen Keane, Plymouth director of public health, said that most of the problems raised by Mayflower residents lie outside the jurisdiction of the town and are best addressed by the Massachusetts Attorney General. Keane said the town has, through Moran’s office, tried to get the attorney general’s office to address the issues at Mayflower.
Parakeet, a Florida-based company, owns 38 manufactured home communities around the country, including four others in Massachusetts.
Collins said she spoke to Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General Daniel Less about the problems at Mayflower in May. She said Lees told her that Mayflower is not the only Parakeet property in Massachusetts with problems. Less promised that the AG’s office would be reaching out to neighbors soon, Collins said, but she has not heard anything since.
Less referred questions from the Plymouth Independent to spokesperson Molly McGlynn, who did not respond to a detailed list of emailed questions.
Collins and Gordon-Crowley’s contact for several of their concerns at Parakeet was Wendy Milenkevich, its regional manager. Several days after she was asked for an interview, Plymouth attorney Allan Costa called on Parakeet’s behalf. In a statement Costa said, “Mayflower Mobile Home Park is aware of various concerns, and has been engaged with both the residents and various authorities to address and rectify these issues.” He didn’t offer any details.
Meantime, it turns out that the fallen pole that caused Lennox’s electrocution should never have been there in the first place. After the accident, town electrical inspector Will Sinclair said he went to the property with an Eversource crew and shut off the power to it. Sinclair said a permit for the pole’s installation had never been pulled.
“They seem to like to do a lot of their own work there, and that’s a problem,” he said of Parakeet.
And like others, he’s had a hard time getting answers from the company. “Them not responding to my phone calls is not the right thing to do,” Sinclair said.
Lennox said Parakeet hired MTV Solutions of Holbrook to install a new pole. That was news to Sinclair.
“I have no electrical permit filed for that,” he said. “It was done illegally.”
But Thomas Rand, general foreman at MTV Solutions, said no permit was required.
“There is no permit necessary for replacing private poles,” Rand said. “We replace them all the time for Eversource. We just got the guy back up on power.”
Sinclair said he is contemplating cutting power to another house at Mayflower Hills because a meter socket has fallen over.
“I guess they just don’t care as long as the rent’s paid,” he said of Parakeet. “Nothing’s getting accomplished because they don’t really care.”
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.