From: John Young <jya-AT-pipeline.com> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 12:01:39 -0500 Subject: Les Miserables de MS-Nirvana The Wall Street Journal, November 15, 1995, pp. A1, A13. Low-Cost Trailer Parks Are Shutting Down, Stranding Many Poor As Shops and Strip Malls Move In, Some Tenants Are Pushed Into Poverty. The Squatters of Olivia Park By Joseph Periera Everett, Wash. - Life hasn't been easy for the residents of Olivia Mobile Home Park since it was closed last June to make room for a planned strip mall. Mark Gordon, an unemployed factory worker, lived in a modest Lamplighter trailer in space No. 11. Unable to find space in another low-cost trailer park nearby, he was forced to sell the Lamplighter. Today he lives out of a 1972 Dodge Tradesman van and washes up with a garden hose. Donald and Judy Hall, from space No. 6, found themselves in similar straits. Thev sold their trailer for $1,200 and spent months living in seedy motels with a knife by their bed, fearful of the rough clientele. They have $1 left in their savings account. Sharmi and Dwayne Daniel abandoned the rickety Airstream in space No. 8. They and their six-year-old Steven spent most of the summer in a tent. Tara, their 12-year-old, found tent life too rough; she left the family to live with her father, Ms. Daniel's former husband. Olivia Park wasn't much. But when it closed, Ms. Daniel says, "I cried and cried and cried." Far from the mainstream of an expanding economy, the lot of many trailer people is worsening. Many parks where low- income residents have lived since World War II are closing. New parks are rare, and many that are being built cater to seniors and vacationers. Increasingly, too, they accept only new manufactured homes -- costing up to $50,000, and unaffordable to those towing the poverty line. Those with old trailers often find they have to ditch them. Estimates of the numbers of trailer dwellers being displaced are hard to come by. But anecdotal evidence puts it in the tens of thousands. Here in Washington state, 22 mobile-home parks have closed since 1989; 34 more are slated for shutdowns. In Vermont, 18 have shut since 1988; 51 are up for sale. In Oregon, 43 parks have closed since 1991. California has lost 49 and Florida, 32 over the same period. "Mobile homes, especially older ones with cheap rent, are an at-risk form of housing," says Jill Milazzo, a Vermont housing-program coordinator. In recent years, the Vermont State Housing Authority has purchased 11 parks to keep residents from going homeless. Other states including California, New Hampshire and Washington, have also started programs to save low-cost parks or help relocate former residents. Image Problem Never popular with nearby homeowners, often the butt of ridicule, trailer parks have nonetheless been important enclaves of affordable housing for America's poor and elderly. Many trailer dwellers are employed in seasonal agricultural work; a majority are blue collar. Unemployment is high. Among senior citizens, who make up one third of the mobile-home population, almost half earn less than $10,000 a year, says an American Association of Retired Persons report. "Communities don't want mobile homes around and some people say they're eyesores," says George Gaverlavage, an analyst for AARP's Public Policy Institute. "But at least they protect you from the sun, rain and snow." Some parks are being closed or condemned as their aging sewers, roads and other infrastructures deteriorate and owners decline to upgrade them. This summer the city of Willmar, Minn., declared Elm Lane Mobile Home Park unsafe for habitation; it burned down the trailers left behind by residents. Nature has taken its toll on others. Missouri authorities recently closed four mobile-home parks weakened and damaged by floods. Paved Away But in many instances, such as Olivia Park, parks are selling out to make room for stores and parking lots. The sites where many trailer parks are located -- out of sight of other houses on the fringes of cities and towns -- are the same locales favored by discount retailers. In Fairfax County, Va., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is building where 200 trailer-home families once lived. In Niagara Falls, N.Y., a Target store will soon go up where the Boathouse Mobile Home Park housed 50 mostly low-income residents. In Seattle, Home Depot Inc. is taking over where the 600-space Trailer Haven Mobile Home Park stood. And the former site of Olivia Park will sprout a shopping center anchored by Office Max, a discount office-supply chain. "For many of these folks, the consequences of a park closure is unthinkable," says Ishbel Dickens, a spokeswoman for the Coalition of Mobile Home Park Residents, a nonprofit Seattle group fighting to keep a number of parks from closing down. "This is more than saving a park, it's saving a way of life." Trailer homes first boomed during World War II, when the government halted all construction not linked to the war effort, creating a housing shortage for workers flocking to big cities for defense-related jobs. Trailers didn't qualify as new building and were exempted from the ban. In the post-war housing boom that followed, trailer sales boomed, too. Early trailers were narrow, uncomfortable and cheaply built. They quickly took on a negative image. In 1976, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development established construction codes for protection against tornadoes and hurricanes. HUD and manufacturers later embarked on a campaign to get people to say "manufactured home" instead of "trailer," and "community" instead of "park," to remove the social stigma. But whatever they are called, many people still don't want them around. "Society thinks trailer parks are where misfits and transients live," says Deborah Chapman, president of the National Foundation of Manufactured Home Owners. Conventional home owners often blame trailers for depressing property values. Many banks won't finance their purchase. Timothy McVeigh, who lived in a trailer before his arrest in the Oklahoma City bombing, hasn't helped the trailer image. Ironically, this displacement of the trailer-park poor is happening at a time when the manufactured-housing industry with sales of $11.3 billion this year, is playing an ever-important role in housing the nation. Consider that about 15 million Americans were living in manufactured homes as of 1990, according the latest data available from the U.S. Census. That number has grown since then. But a profile of those 15 million tells a different story. About five million inhabited trailer parks -- and most were trailer owners who paid monthly costs, including space rental fees and utilities, of between $200 and $500. Now, with such low-cost parks closing by the droves, and many new parks excluding older trailers, such residents are caught in a double squeeze because the values of their trailers are also being driven down. For example, a trailer costing $12,000 in 1972 may fetch as little as $2,000 today, providing its owner little capital to invest in new housing should he get evicted and be forced to sell. The events at Olivia Park are instructive. Five years ago, Mark Gordon bought a 14-by-46-foot Lamplighter built in 1973 for $3,000. "It was tan with brown imitation shutters," he says proudly. "It had new carpeting and a new water heater." He recalls his family saying, "We don't have to worry about Mark now." But "the sweet life of homeownership," as Mr. Gordon puts it, came to an end this spring. Olivia Park tenants were told they had to vacate by June 1. Once a picture of tranquility, with big elms, maples and pines, the 5.5-acre park quickly turned into a dump. Tenants left in a hurry, abandoning heaps of clothing, old furniture and appliances, some tossed into overgrown elephant grass and berry vines. A handful found space in other parks. Mr. Gordon wasn't among them. He sold his trailer two months ago for a loss and bought a van for $600. With nowhere to go, he squatted for a while on the site where his trailer once stood. Unemployed for six months, Mr. Gordon last worked as a quality-control inspector at a metal-plating plant in Everett but was fired after arguing for more medical benefits. Because prospective employers have no place to reach him, he has been unable to find a new job. "I have no address. I have no phone. I just keep filling out applications, an exercise some might find futile," Mr. Gordon says. Sipping coffee one morning near his van, his weather-beaten face makes him looker older than his 33 years. Behind the van, under a clear plastic covering propped up by two-by-fours, is his "living room." An oil-stained tarpaulin hangs on one side to keep out the wind. A blanket, tossed over what used to be his trailer's front steps, functions as a table. He brushes his teeth with water from a hose connected to the trailer of another squatter. He uses a toilet in an abandoned trailer 50 yards away. "Welcome to the other side of midnight," he says. Too Old to Move Movers told Sharmi Daniel that her 1972 Greatland, three spaces down from Mr. Gordon, would fall apart if they tried to lift it. So she left it behind when Olivia Park closed. Junk or not, it was home -- and affordable. Ms. Daniel, 30, is on welfare, and gets $546 a month. Her husband Dwayne injured his back while laying carpet and can't work. With two children, they had a hard time finding an apartment she could afford. Before moving to Olivia Park, they paid rent on an apartment that was $78 more than her welfare income. After eviction from Olivia Park, the Daniels decided to move to a campground 10 minutes away by canoe, in an undeveloped island on the Snohomish River. Tara, their daughter, left to live with her father in another part of the state. "It's really embarrassing for any 12-year-old girl to have to live like Robinson Crusoe," says Ms. Daniel, paddling on the Snohomish. Ms. Daniel, her son, Steven, and Mr. Daniel lived on the island through most of the summer, crossing by canoe to run errands. Once, the canoe capsized and Mr. Daniel's glasses fell in the river. There is no money for a new pair. "He borrows mine, but they do him no good," Ms. Daniel says. Ms. Daniel has been a traffic flagger, a teacher's assistant and a dancer in a club. She says it wouldn't pay to take a job offering less than $10 an hour because child care would eat up most of it. Her husband, Dwayne, spends most of the day at school studying to be a veterinary assistant. Ms. Daniel caught pneumonia in the camp after it rained for a week. The family bathed in the icy river. Slender, with wavy auburn hair, Ms. Daniel says the things she missed most were a mirror and cooking in an oven. "It's all part of your identity," she says. "Looking decent and being in the kitchen." Again desperate, the Daniels recently managed to rent a room in a three-bedroom apartment in Everett for $300 a month. Steven will be able to go to school with an address, and "I guess I'll be making a lot of friends at the soup kitchen," Ms. Daniel says. It is hard to determine how many go homeless after a trailer park closes. With no phones or addresses, people simply disappear. But shelter workers say they see a fair number of ex-trailer dwellers passing through. Donald and Judy Hall also have been on the move. They lived in cheap motels until the $1,200 they received from the sale of their trailer ran out. The move from Olivia Park nearly broke up their marriage, they say. But recently they ran into a bit of luck. Some friends agreed to lend them a mobile home 22 miles away on an Indian reservation outside Marysville. It leaves much to be desired. The tap water is brown and foul; drinking it, even after boiling, makes them sick. After showering the first day, the Halls broke out in rashes. So Mr. Hall, 52, says he "spends a lot of time with a five-gallon container" looking for good water. One evening, the Halls are found revisiting Olivia Park, where the landlord has temporarily left on the water spigot. Mrs. Hall, 50, looks weary after four months of transient living. "In 50 years I have never experienced such depression," she says. Working in Seattle as an assistant to a locksmith gives her some satisfaction. It pays $60 a day. "There's hot water there," she says, laughing. Mr. Hall is unemployed. He says he was fired as an auto-shop supervisor at about the time Olivia closed. Stress has aggravated a skin condition, making it hard for him to work with cars again. Hunching slightly in his cowboy boots, he shows off hands that are sandpapery and heavily chapped. Exposure to petroleum products creates blistering, Mr. Hall explains. "I don't know what else to do, I've been a mechanic for 27 years," he says. Each day that Mr. Hall is unemployed, Mrs. Hall grows more impatient. After a recent argument with her husband, she spent a night alone at a motel. "I thought I could just forget everything for one night," she says. "I come from Kansas. I grew up on farmland. When you went to buy a cow you shook hands and that was as good as a signature on a deed. Growing up as a child I never heard a cross word. My parents loved each other. My father went to work every day and I always believed that in America a decent home was within reach of everyone." Painful Notice The Cannon family at Olivia Park initially ignored the June closing date; Margaret Cannon, suffering from breast cancer that had metastasized, was too ill to move. Lloyd Cannon, 62, her husband, and Rick, 33, her son, tended to her, but didn't often mention the park's closure. "We just knew it was a sore subject, it was too painful," Rick says. But in July, they were served an eviction notice. Life wasn't ideal at Olivia, the Cannons say. One of the tenants sold drugs in the far corner of the park. But that seemed to add to the solidarity among other residents. Rick, Mr. Gordon and the Daniels sometimes gathered in a makeshift steam room -- fired by wood stove -- that tenants helped build for Michael Weaver, a neighbor recuperating from a work-related back injury. "We looked out for each other," Rick Cannon says. Late in the afternoon of Aug. 26, Margaret Cannon slipped into a coma. She was rushed to the hospital and died a few hours later. The next day the Cannons say they received a second eviction notice. "What heart," Rick Cannon says. Wallace Barnett, the park's owner, says the park had become run-down; maintenance and taxes made it unprofitable to operate. Still, he says he felt bad for the tenants especially the Cannons. Many, he acknowledges, "had a real hard time finding a place to live." As a humane act, Mr. Barnett says he left the park's water on until the Cannons left the site last month. The Cannons purchased a used travel trailer and now move from campsite to campsite. Rick, who once ran a janitorial service, quit to take care of his father; he would like to resume working but says his father, in a deep depression, needs him. "Some folks have it good, some don't," Rick Cannon says, packing up his stuff one recent evening. "Trailer folk fall in the latter category." [End] --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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