Concord Monitor — ‘Predatory in Nature’: AG Investigating Consumer Protection Concerns at Hopkinton Manufactured Housing Park

Rep. Pappas Met with Residents at The Meadows Community to Discuss New Hampshire’s Affordable Housing Crisis

CONTOOCOOK, N.H. — In case you missed it, the Concord Monitor highlighted Congressman Chris Pappas’s recent visit to The Meadows Community in Contoocook, a 70-lot manufactured housing park, to discuss New Hampshire’s affordable housing crisis and the impact of out-of-state corporations buying up Granite State communities. 

Last year, the park was sold to Sado Parks, a Michigan-based investment firm, resulting in steep rents for new owners and rent hikes for existing residents. Pappas recently introduced the Manufactured Housing Community Sustainability Act, which would incentivize manufactured home park owners to sell the park to community residents or nonprofits, rather than another developer or landlord. This would help more Granite Staters stay in their homes by protecting residents in manufactured homes from excessive rent increases.

Read the full story here and key excerpts below.

Concord Monitor: ‘Predatory in nature’: AG investigating consumer protection concerns at Hopkinton manufactured housing park

By Charlotte Matherly, 6/17/26

  • […]
  • Under the park’s new ownership, residents say their costs are increasing and it’s becoming more difficult to sell their homes.
  • Michigan-based investment firm Sado Capital purchased the Meadows and another manufactured housing park in Hopkinton last year for $12.8 million. The attorney general’s office is now investigating the company’s business practices […]
  • In it, residents accuse Sado Capital and its CEO, Joel Mazur, of “engaging in unfair and deceptive practices designed to strip residents of their home equity.” Doing so, they argue, has chipped away at one of the few affordable housing options left in New Hampshire.
  • “He has no interest in the business of running a mobile home park,” said Jean Lightfoot, a resident who is trying to sell her home and signed onto the complaint. “All he wants is to suck every last dime he can out of us.”
  • […]
  • Congressman Chris Pappas visited Lightfoot’s home on Thursday to hear from residents about their concerns. Hopkinton is not in his district, but Pappas is running for U.S. Senate this year.
  • “What they’re doing here is just predatory in nature,” Pappas said. “There’s no reason that this should be permitted.”
  • Pappas and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen are working on federal legislation to incentivize sales to park residents over other landlords by allowing a 75% tax credit when a manufactured housing community is sold to a resident-owned cooperative. People should be “in control of their own destiny,” he said, and residents like Lightfoot and Ryerson should have the first opportunity to buy the land where they live.
  • “We need to be working hand-in-glove, from the federal and state level, to make progress, to address the housing crisis that we’re seeing,” Pappas said, “including addressing the corporate private equity influence that we’re seeing in housing that’s making it less affordable and is causing a lot of consternation here at this park.”
  • Legislation like that could have made a difference at the Meadows, where residents tried to band together and form a resident-owned cooperative to buy the park. Their offer was turned down, they said.
  • […]

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