Deluge of problems causes boiling tempers at mobile home community

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Fort Wayne’s NBC) - The water is back on at a Fort Wayne mobile home community, But neighbors there are still upset that they went more than 12 hours yesterday without service.

City Utilities officials confirmed that the property management group in charge -- not the residents -- fell behind on their water bill.

“We had to leave to go take showers,” Resident Mashelle Lemke said. “We had to leave to go the bathroom. I don’t want to go to the bathroom in a bucket or in a bag.”

Lemke has lived there for four years. She said that officials with the mobile home community passed out bottled water while residents waited for service to be restored.

Lemke says since she moved in, there’s been a deluge problems. In fact, neighbors say Monday’s outage was familiar territory.

“This is not the first time,” Lemke said. “We’ve had where the water temporarily get shut off because of non-payment but it was back two or three hours later.”

Officials with Fort Wayne City Utilites said the parent company of the mobile home community, Vineyards Management Group, were behind on payments.

“If everyone is paying their rent, how are they not able to pay a water bill?” another resident said.

After hearing these complaints from neighbors, we went to the front office, which was locked. It appeared none of the managers with the mobile home community were there. We also called them, but there was no answer from them, or their parent company’s office in Utah.

“I can’t take this anymore,” Lemke said. “Especially when it didn’t get turned back on till 9:30 at night, granted they did come and bring water but it was a case per trailer. One case of water is barely enough for a flush.”

As soon as we get a response from officials from the mobile home community, we’ll pass that along to you.

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