Palm Beach Mobile Home Park Another Affordable Housing Casualty
Hilltop Gardens Mobile Home Park is dying. The once lively park with the fruity street names now is mostly deserted. An eviction notice of April 30 is in effect.
According to the Palm Beach Post, the dozen or so residents left at the 150-trailer park said it’s yet another affordable housing oasis gobbled up by developers.
“We have nowhere to go,” said Gustavo Jimenez, a cook who paid $8,000 for the single-wide trailer two years ago and was given $2,000 by a developer to leave the trailer.
In a part of the state where Florida mortgage costs are astronomic compared to what lower- and even middle-class residents make, the mobile home park offered a reprieve. No longer.
The owners, Hilltop Residential LTD, plan a townhouse development to be built by California-based Standard Pacific Homes. Hilltop bought the park just east of H.L. Watkins Middle School in 2005, sending out eviction notices requiring residents to leave by October 2005.
The notice complied with the Florida Mobile Home Act which requires owners to give residents at least six months eviction notice. Residents hired lawyer Karen Mentor and filed suit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, which ruled tenants be given another 12 months to stay.
The ruling requires the new owners to reimburse residents up to $6,000 to sign a bill of sale and move their double-wide mobile homes. Residents are given $3,000 to move single-wide mobile homes.
“These people are getting bulldozed. They should at least give them enough to start somewhere. This amount is not even close to a down payment in Palm Beach County,” said Mentor.
Resident Bill Armstrong, 56, plans to move in with his mother. When he and his wife Monika bought their single-wide, their plan was to improve their investment and sell for a profit. Hurricanes and a slow South Florida housing market ended that idea.
“This was a beautiful place when we moved in,” he said, nodding to the empty mobile homes and silent streets around him. “Now look at it.”
Where a multitude of residents go from here in this environment of super expensive Florida mortgage loan payments remains to be seen.
Continue reading in the Palm Beach Post …
