Susan and Ken Nyhusmoen moved 18 times before they finally found a place they wanted to call home: Risor of St. Louis Park, a 55-and-older apartment community that opened in 2023. Now the 81-year-old couple, who live on a fixed retirement income, are bracing for new utility charges that could threaten their ability to stay when their lease ends in June 2027.
Risor management plans to end its bundled rent-and-utilities billing and will charge up to 300 tenants separately for gas and electricity, along with a formula-based charge for water, sewage and trash, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. The new charges begin for leases signed after September 1, 2026, and will not apply to renters enrolled in affordable housing programs. Susan Nyhusmoen said moving again would be difficult and upsetting, and the couple wants to remain at Risor.
More than 100 tenants attended a meeting at Risor of St. Louis Park about the new payment structure, per the same account. Roers Companies, the Plymouth-based real estate investor and management group that owns and manages the property, said it changed direction because of rising utility costs. The company plans to phase in a traditional utility-payment structure and has properties across the United States, but it did not identify the two additional Risor buildings, also managed by Roers, that will add utility fees under the new structure.
A Portfolio Built on Downsizing Seniors
Roers launched its Risor brand in 2021 to target middle-income active seniors looking to downsize from single-family homes without moving into full-service care, shortly after selling its previous five-property Havenwood senior living portfolio for $160 million in 2022. The company's 172-unit Risor of Apple Valley, built for $43.7 million and opened in October 2022, became the blueprint for later properties in Bloomington, Maple Grove and St. Louis Park.
Roers has 55-and-older buildings in Apple Valley, Blaine, Bloomington and Maple Grove in addition to St. Louis Park. In March 2025, the company secured $42.9 million in bridge refinancing through JLL Capital Markets for the 170-unit St. Louis Park property, which opened with 18 income-restricted affordable units, according to JLL. That same month, Roers obtained a $33.241 million Fannie Mae loan through JLL to refinance the 169-unit Risor of Maple Grove, completed in June 2023.
Average rents at Risor of St. Louis Park have increased 2.7% since the property opened, while utility costs have climbed between 8% and 20% over the same period, per property manager Shane LaFave as cited by the Star Tribune. Ratio utility billing, LaFave has explained, distributes utility costs proportionally among residents rather than charging a flat bundled rate.
Tenants Describe Fear, Frustration and Unanswered Letters
Bonnie Condit, 83, sold her condominium after 42 years to move into Risor and said the billing decision was unfair, claiming she already paid more rent than some other tenants. She said Roers has not answered her letters asking about backpay. Michelle Reichow, another tenant, questioned whether she could afford to stay and worries the unbundled utility charges could price her out of Risor altogether.
Tenants at the property include people with fixed incomes, physical disabilities, dementia or Alzheimer's disease, according to the newspaper's reporting. Some residents have also reported stolen bicycles, unsecured doors and inaccessible entryways, separate complaints raised alongside the utility billing dispute.
What Minnesota Law Says About Utility Rebilling
Gary Van Winkle, a staff attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid who trains University of St. Thomas law students to handle utility-law cases, said landlords and third parties are increasingly billing tenants for utilities separately from rent. He said Minnesota Public Utilities Commission regulations can be bypassed when landlords or third-party agents handle utility billing themselves, and that unpaid utility debt could support a nonpayment eviction. Non-provider utility billing has increased over roughly the past 15 years and can create problems for tenants, Van Winkle said, noting that late utility bills can climb from $90 to more than $1,000 within a matter of months.
Minnesota lawmakers overhauled shared-meter utility billing rules in 2024 with Minn. Stat. § 504B.216, which took effect in 2025 and prohibits landlords from using Ratio Utility Billing Systems for electricity in shared-meter buildings while capping third-party administrative fees at $8 per utility, according to the MN Revisor's Office. A separate law effective January 1, 2024, Minn. Stat. § 504B.120, requires landlords to disclose the total monthly payment — combining base rent and all mandatory fees — on the first page of the lease, with violators facing treble damages plus attorney fees. Minnesota judicial precedent dating to 1999, including Carr v. Schlink, had already held that landlords in shared-meter buildings could not rebill tenants using mathematical formulas without installing individual meters or folding utilities directly into base rent.
Under enforcement guidelines from the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, landlords who fail to strictly follow statutory requirements when billing utilities separately face liability equal to triple the tenant's actual damages or $500, whichever is greater. Roughly 90% of renters nationally pay one or more utilities separately, per census data cited in the reporting, reflecting how widespread the practice has become even as Minnesota tightens its rules around it.
Few Alternatives for Seniors on Fixed Incomes
The stakes are especially high because so many Twin Cities senior renters already have little financial cushion. Between 61% and 69% of senior renters across six Twin Cities metro counties spend 30% or more of their monthly income on housing, including 65% in Dakota County and 62% in Ramsey County, according to the Minnesota Housing Partnership. Meanwhile, the Twin Cities metro faces a shortage of more than 72,900 affordable and available rental units for households earning at or below 50% of area median income, with 47.5% of all metro renters considered cost-burdened, per the Eno Center for Transportation.
That leaves residents like the Nyhusmoens with few realistic options if unbundled utility bills push their monthly expenses past what their fixed incomes can bear. For now, they say they simply want to stay put — in the home they searched 18 moves to finally find.
