Esther Sullivan
The University of Texas at Austin
Title:
Half-way Homeowners: Eviction and Forced Relocation among Homeowners in Manufactured
Home Parks in Florida.
Abstract
The last four decades of U.S. housing policy have seen an overhaul of the federal allocation of
affordable housing as a public good to the neoliberal model of private and for-profit provision of
affordable housing. This shift warrants a study of the link between the interests that now shape
low-income housing markets and the stability of the housing they provide. Nowhere are the
effects of this shift more evident than in the homes of the 10 million American households living
in manufactured housing, which is installed largely on the private lands of for-profit developers
who can close parks and force residents to move themselves and their homes with as little as 30days notice. This ethnography of mass eviction in a Florida mobile home park examines state
regulations intended to protect residents of parks during relocations and analyzes how these
policies are shaped by non-state actors and private interests.
1
Background and Significance
The provision of affordable housing has in the last two decades been increasingly
privatized and entrusted to for-profit developers. The common sense that this is the most
efficient mode of regulating affordable housing has been challenged by failures of the private
housing market, which are dramatically illustrated by the continuing foreclosure crisis. The
neoliberal shift in the provision of housing and the failure of the private housing market
evidenced in the foreclosure crisis warrants a study of the link between the political economies
that shape housing markets and the stability of the housing they provide. In the last four decades
these markets have experienced a major shift as the cultural imperative of homeownership has
been extended to low-income Americans1, as federal subsidy of low-income housing has been
repeatedly slashed, and as private for-profit development of low-income housing has become the
predominant (and federally-backed) provider of affordable housing. The collective effect of
these shifts is nowhere better illustrated than in the millions of mobile homes present in every
state of the U.S. that today provide the largest unsubsidized source of affordable housing in the
country, and are an important way that U.S. middle and working class residents fulfill the desire
to live in private, self-owned housing.
In the United States almost 10 million households live in manufactured housing and
about half of these households live in 50,000 mobile home parks located throughout the nation
(Apgar, Calder, Collins and Duda, 2002, MHAA 2011). In mobile home parks, a remarkable 80
percent of residents own their homes; however, only 14 percent also own the land underneath
their homes (HAC 2011). The location of mobile homes on private lands in parks makes them
1
This imperative has economic incentives, as evidenced by the proliferation of NINA (No
Income No Asset) mortgage lending for low-income would-be homebuyers and the growth of the
financial markets that profited from them.
2
vulnerable to redevelopment when landlords pursue more profitable land uses and when state
laws facilitate the sale of parks and the legal eviction of park residents.
While the federal government endorses the manufactured housing industry through its
agencies and initiatives, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (NCSL 2010, US Commerce Department
2010, Dawkins et al. 2011),2 it does not regulate manufactured housing beyond the construction
phase. In the absence of federal regulation, states are left to fill in the gap. Mobile homeowners
are just that, homeowners. However, home owning households living within mobile home parks
are marked by “divided asset ownership” (Hirsch and Rufolo, 1999), meaning that residents own
their mobile home but rent the land on which it is sited. In the US, homeownership is lauded as
producing important benefits for physical and mental health as well as financial security (Rossi
and Weber, 1996; Rohe and Stegman 1996, Rohe et al., 2001), however, the security of mobile
homeowners in mobile home parks depends on the decisions by private landlords to continue to
invest in and operate as a mobile home park.
Across the country mobile home park closures are increasing (CFED July 2010). In
Florida, the site of this study, a national advocacy group found that 1,500 communities were at
risk of closing in 2010 (CFED October 2010). In the event of a park closure, residents’ fates are
determined by landlord tenant law in the majority of states that lack specific regulations for park
redevelopment (Tremoulet 2010). State laws vary widely; the required ‘notice of eviction’ period
2
For instance, Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs) and the HOME Investment
Partnership Program, both administered by HUD, include specific language to ensure that their
assistance in providing and maintaining affordable housing is extended to manufactured housing.
The latter specifically includes manufactured housing in its definition of affordable housing. The
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (PL 111-5) extends the first-time
homebuyer’s tax credit to manufactured home buyers.
3
ranges from 10 days to 120 days, though only five states have notice periods of 60 days or more
(CFED October 2010). The risk of mobile park closure is especially prominent in the southern
states of the U.S. where a higher proportion of mobile homes are located (Dawkins et al. 2011).
Florida is one of approximately eight states in the U.S. that has legislation specifically
addressing the relocation process during mobile home park closures.3 The state of Florida is also
home to more manufactured home residents then all other states except California. Roughly 1.5
million Floridians live in manufactured housing, accounting for 10% of the state’s residents
(Florida State Senate 2006). Florida is also noteworthy in that it has a statewide manufactured
homeowners association that lobbies on behalf of mobile homeowners. It also has a state Mobile
Home Act that regulates several elements of the relocation process for residents whose mobile
home parks close. In part because of the sheer number of Floridians living in manufactured
housing -10% of the state’s residents (Florida Senate 2006) - it is among the handful of states
that has been held up as a model for state legislation on mobile home park closures (CFED
December 2009). This paper analyzes the attempt of one state, Florida, to legislate the process of
forced relocation for its mobile home residents. In doing so, the paper interrogates the
mechanisms through which state housing regulations are shaped by the priorities of local
planning administrations and city governments and reshaped by non-state actors.
Despite the legality (and frequency) of these forced relocations, they result in severe
crises for individuals and families who must move both themselves and their homes with often
only 30-days notice. The study of mobile home park mass evictions presents an unprecedented
opportunity to investigate how, in absence of federal regulation, state law and local housing
3
These states are Florida, Idaho, South Carolina, and Washington (CFED December 2009),
California, New York and New Hampshire (CFED September 2010) and Oregon (Tremoulet
2010).
4
policies mitigate (or aggravate) the effects of forced relocation for residents and how, under
increasingly neoliberal affordable housing regulation, non-state actors shape the actual outcomes
of these statutes. I investigate this problem at three scales in the state with one of the largest
mobile home park populations and one of the most protective regulatory regimes for mobile
home park residents. In this paper I examine state housing policy that manages relocation from
mobile home parks, regional redevelopment goals that mediate the redevelopment of mobile
home parks, and household interactions with state and non-state actors that produce varied
trajectories for individuals and families.
This project draws on ethnography conducted from June 2012 to February 2013 within a
closing mobile home park in Florida to document and analyze housing insecurity and eviction
among homeowners living in mobile home parks. The analysis of one city’s lengthy review of a
mobile home park closure and their process of relocating residents reveals – in real space and
time from within a closing park – that state protections for mobile home residents in Florida are
eventually entrusted exclusively to the private companies that transport, reinstall, and lease new
lots to mobile homes. These companies not only profit from the churning of park residents but
they also determine the structure of the relocation process for residents. The functioning of these
private actors fits squarely into the neoliberal logic that regulates the contemporary provision of
affordable housing. This logic provides local authorities with justification for approving park
closures while relinquishing control of the administration of the state mandated protections for
mobile home park residents that are meant to ensure mobile homes are adequately relocated. In
the end, private actors determine where, when, how, and if homes will be relocated with little
oversight of local or state authorities and with the advancing acquiescence of exhausted
residents.
5
Literature Review
The Indispensability and Dispensability of Manufactured Housing
The last three decades have seen an increase in mobile home residency as a viable
affordable housing choice for homeowners and tenants. Throughout the 1980s the number of
mobile homes in the United States grew by more than 50 percent to reach 7.3 million in 1990
(Meeks 1998; Wallis 1991). By 2007, the Manufactured Housing Institute estimated there were
more than 10 million manufactured homes throughout the United States, housing approximately
22.5 million people (NCSL 2007). The prevalence of manufactured housing is largely due to its
relative affordability in comparison to homes built on site. Affordability is in part the product of
a unique form of housing tenure: many mobile home residents install their home on rented land
in mobile home parks. This form of housing tenure places mobile home residents, even those
who have long owned their homes, at risk of eviction when parks are sold or redeveloped. Urban
redevelopment and suburban sprawl have put pressure on mobile home park owners to sell or
covert mobile home communities at a growing rate in the last decades, resulting in an “epidemic
of closures” (CFED July 2010, p. 1).
Manufactured housing is currently the largest unsubsidized source of affordable housing
in the US (CFED February 2011) and throughout the 1990s it was responsible for 66% of the
new affordable housing produced (Apgar et al. 2002). The US Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) as well as the current American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
both actively promote the manufactured housing industry because of its unmatched ability to
provide affordable housing and advance homeownership. Despite policies that recognize the
importance of manufactured housing production for supplying low- and moderate-income
6
Americans with affordable homes, the long-term stability of this form of housing tenure is
fraught with risks. Mobile homes installed on privately owned lots have most of the legal
protections afforded to site-built homes. However, the estimated 2.9 million mobile homes
(about 43% of the manufactured housing in the U.S.) located within land-lease communities,
commonly referred to as mobile home parks, have few protections against excessive rent
increases, inadequate park maintenance, lack of written or long-term leases, and most troubling,
park closure and mass eviction (Kochera 2001).
Laws that define mobile homes as non-real estate4 and favor landlords’ over tenants’
rights facilitate the eviction of mobile home residents living on leased land (CFED July 2010).
A remarkable 80 percent of mobile homes located within parks are owned by their inhabitants;
however, only 14 percent of park residents also own the land underneath their homes (HAC
2011). Across the country mobile home park closures are increasing (CFED July 2010).
According to a recent policy brief:
Between May 2005 and May 2007, 18 states witnessed the closure of at least one
manufactured home [community], displacing thousands of homeowners. Some states
have been severely affected. More than 83 communities in Florida have closed, and
experts estimate that approximately 1,500 more Florida communities are at risk of
closing. In rapidly developing suburban areas, where most communities are located, the
price of land has increased substantially, and developers are buying manufactured home
communities to convert them to other uses … Unless there is a state law requiring
advance notice, community owners typically withhold information about the
community’s closure until the very last minute. (CFED July 2010)
State laws vary widely in their protections for homeowners and tenants living in mobile home
parks. In most states the legal status of mobile home park residents is similar to that of apartment
renters, who can be evicted with only 30 days notice (HAC 2011). Even with advanced notice of
4
The majority of manufactured housing is titled as personal property rather than real estate (U.S.
Commerce Department, 2010). Most homes in mobile home parks are financed as personal
property or “chattel” loans, similar to car or boat loans. These loans have shorter terms and
higher interests rates than conventional mortgages (Housing Assistance Council 2011).
7
eviction, park residents are left with few options. They must move or, as often happens, abandon
their homes.
Mobile home park closure and resulting evictions present a unique risk to the 80 percent
of park residents that own their homes. Despite the misleading designation “mobile,” for several
reasons mobile home residents are often unable to move the homes they own. In fact, mobile
homes are very immobile structures; once set in place their frames slacken and relocation can
result in serious structural damage (Consumer’s Union 2001). The Manufactured Housing
Institute, the national trade organization that represents all segments of the factory-built housing
industry, boasts that more than 90 percent of today’s manufactured homes never move from their
original site. But this estimate is misleading. Many homeowners are forced to abandon their
homes when faced with mobile home park closure. The cost of relocating a mobile home is
prohibitive and can be more than the homeowner initially paid for the home. Estimates range
from $5,000 to $10,000 with permitting and installation fees. According to one study this
represents five to seven years worth of equity for many manufactured homeowners (CFED July
2010).
Additionally, it is difficult to find spaces in parks that will accommodate a relocated
mobile home. New spaces do not often open up in established parks; park vacancy rates are
commonly in the single digits. Some new parks do not allow used homes. According to a
Consumer’s Union study, parks “often restrict access based on the age, brand, or size of a mobile
home, and on the type of materials used in construction” (2001: 5). All these factors limit choices
for displaced homeowners. A study of two park closures in Oregon estimated that it would take
14 years for local mobile home parks to accommodate the displaced homes from a single mobile
home park closure (Sheehan & Colton 1994). With short notice, prohibitive relocation costs, and
8
few park vacancies, many homeowners sell their homes for a fraction of their appraised value or
they abandon them to park owners who collect additional profits by selling off deserted homes
(Consumer’s Union 2001).
Mobile home park closures result in legal mass evictions. These evictions have not been
systematically documented in any region of the US. Notably, the issue is yet to be addressed in
the academic literature. More than merely investigating a currently unstudied problem, focusing
attention on the forced relocation of mobile home residents makes a case for expanding the
conventional definition of eviction, which limits the term to cases initiated within the court
system. While necessarily shortsighted, this conventional approach is methodologically useful
because actions initiated by landlords in the courts require documentation that is otherwise
lacking on eviction. However, it creates a circumscribed view of the problem by obscuring the
myriad ways that tenants are forced from their residences without ever appearing in court.
Obtaining much needed data on evictions requires addressing a key methodological issue,
namely “how to derive data on involuntary loss of residence due to pressures and forces that do
not eventuate in formal legal proceedings” (Hartman & Robinson 2003: 492). Because of the
factors outlined above, tracking mobile home park closures is one way to derive such data
because these closures result in residential relocations that are completely legal, widely
uncontested, and lend themselves to alternative methods of documentation, such as ethnographic
analysis.
The Housing Market as an Analytical Tool
9
In the U.S. a neoliberal housing model has seen the budget of HUD slashed more than
any other federal-level branch of government, a moratorium on all new public housing, and the
redevelopment of many usable subsidized housing projects into more profitable uses through
programs such as Hope VI (Hackworth 2009). A political economy view predicts that the
ascendancy of neoliberal housing policy would see an accompanying shift to the private
provision of low-income housing and the retrenchment of state-enforced protections for the
people who live there.
Using the market for mobile home lands – and the mass relocations the sale of these lands
necessitate - as an analytical tool allows for an examination of these struggles from within a field
shaped by interested parties. Residents’ attempts to grapple with a relocation process initiated by
the sale and redevelopment of their land are especially indicative of the type of “growth
machine” politics theorized by John Logan and Harvey Molotch (1987). For Logan and Molotch,
place has meaning and use value in resident’s daily lives, but it also has exchange value as a
market commodity that can produce wealth and power for those who own and control it. Despite
political differences, those in positions to make decisions on community development issues
most often agree with the dictum that growth is good. This dominates the intentions of local
governments, it establishes that the city is a “growth machine,” and it assures that the commodity
status of an area along with the organization of interests within that area will determine that
area’s fate (Logan and Molotch 1987). This view of the politics of place is especially significant
in communities like mobile home parks, where the commodity status of place is literally
inscribed into the land by divided-asset ownership.
Here I follow the writing Logan and Molotch in attempting to understand if the actors
involved in regulating the redevelopment of mobile home park lands privilege the exchange
10
value of land over its use value for residents, as a political economy view of urban politics would
predict. In desirable real estate markets, mobile home parks are often at risk of closure and
redevelopment when forces such as gentrification, densification, and urbanization make park
property more desirable and valuable. Because most mobile home parks are privately owned by
for-profit developers, closing parks and evicting residents is completely legal. If Logan and
Molotch are correct in their assessment of local governments, the redevelopment of parks may
even be facilitated by the interest of city governments in the growth and intensification of uses
within their jurisdiction.
Political economy views of urban development hypothesize that interest in growth by
those with decision-making power – primarily local politicians and developers – determines the
shaping (and reshaping) of urban regions. The language used by public officials in reviewing
land use changes for mobile home parks offer clues into the philosophies that condition and
justify these interests. This paper examines whether and how pervasive contemporary
development agendas promote the redevelopment of mobile home parks and provide city
officials with justification for supporting the mass evictions of their residents. I explore this
question by investigating the structure of local town council meetings and the vernacular used by
town councils, planning staff, and representatives for developers. Specifically, I examine how
Town officials and developers manufacture support for mobile home park redevelopment using
livability and new urbanist discourses promoted by increasingly popular city planning theories
such as Richard Florida’s creative class concepts (Florida 2004 [2002]) and Andres Duany’s new
urbanist theories (Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Alminana 2003).
Research Questions
11
Through ethnography within a closing mobile home park, this research begins to expand
the definition of eviction to include compulsory moves that do not rely on court issued mandates
and explore how these legal, forced relocations actually unfold for mobile home residents.
Specifically the ethnography attempts to answer the following questions: a) where do evicted
park residents go when parks are closed, b) how do they make decisions on what is best for them
and/or their families, c) how do they view the social and legal processes that force their
relocation, d) on what forms of support do they rely, and e) how is their relocation managed by
state and local agencies and influenced by non-state actors?
This paper examines the relationship between the political economies that regulate
regional housing policy and the housing trajectories they produce for low-income residents. In
reviewing the state and local policies meant to manage residents in the wake of a mobile home
park closure, I take “neoliberal housing policy” to mean housing policy that enhances the role of
the private sector in providing for relocation services and new housing assistance to evicted
residents. In analyzing the ways in which growth machine politics and neoliberal housing policy
shape state legislated protections for mobile home park residents, this paper asks the following
related questions: How do local governments respond to applications for land use changes that
require the closure of parks and the eviction of mobile home residents within their jurisdiction?
How do the decisions of city councils reviewing land use changes for mobile home parks
demonstrate this balance of interests? What language do officials use to assess the competing
interests of sellers, buyers, and residents of mobile home parks? When parks are slated to close,
how do state policies determine the actual trajectories of people living in mobile home parks?
Finally, how do state laws meant to protect the interests of mobile home residents merge with
free-market processes to shape the way these relocation processes unfold?
12
Methods
Through ethnographic fieldwork I examine how the set of economic and social conditions
produced by state law and local housing policy contribute to the life outcomes of residents in an
affected community. This ethnography takes place in Florida, the U.S. state with more
manufactured home residents then all other states except California. Moreover, Florida’s mobile
home parks typically serve senior citizens (Florida State Senate 2006), which are a crucial, at
risk, and understudied group when examining housing related crises (Klinenberg 2002). In 2001
the Florida Legislature created the Mobile Home Relocation Program, codified within the
Florida Mobile Home Act (ch. 723, F.S.), to regulate several elements of the relocation process
for residents whose mobile home parks close (Florida State Senate 2006). Thus, Florida is not
only chosen for the sheer number of mobile home parks in the state but for the demographic
make-up of its residents and for the unique regulatory environment these residents can access.
The research site, Silver Sands Mobile Home Park5 in South Florida, was chosen because
it met prerequisites of a likely-to-close community in that at the beginning of the research it was:
A) owned by a single landlord or property company, B) offered for sale by that property
owner/owners, C) beginning final sales negotiations with a real estate buyer, and D) if sold, soon
to enter the legally defined period in which residents are given “Notice to Vacate” (6 months in
Florida). Choosing the case study according to these requirements produces a shorter (about 9month), intensive, crisis-point ethnography in which individual trajectories and community
dynamics are catalyzed by the instantaneous predicament of having to immediately relocate en
masse.
5
The names of the mobile home park, all individuals, and companies are pseudonyms.
13
In June 2012, I relocated to Florida, where I have lived full time in a 1970’s mobile home
in Silver Sands for the past 9 months. This park was chosen because it met the criteria outlined at
the beginning of this section, which classified it as a likely-to-close community. When I moved
into the park, the park owner had entered into final sales negotiations with a serious buyer and
they had held a meeting to inform the residents of this. I moved into the community about 5
months before the Town Council approved the zoning change necessary to finalize this sale.
Because of this, my ethnographic fieldwork captures residents’ actions, strategies, and
interpretations before the property was sold, during the critical stage in which the sale became a
reality, immediately after the property changed hands, at the moment we received eviction
notices, in the aftermath of the news of the parks closing, during the first stages of planning for
relocation, and on the days when the first homes were hauled away from the community.
Silver Sands is a 55 and older, seniors mobile home community. All residents in Silver
Sands, except for myself, own their homes. The community is almost exclusively White; one
Guatemalan couple moved in this year and one Filipino couple has lived here for about 4 years.
There are no other Black, Latino, or Asian residents. Silver Sands was opened in 1969. Some
residents have lived in Silver Sands for as long as 30 years. Many moved into the park in the last
10 years, during the time the park owner began to tell residents that he planned to list the park for
sale. A handful has moved in the last year or two, as the sale of the park became more imminent.
Residents’ ages range from early 50s to early 90s. Many Silver Sands residents are transplants
from the Northeast or Midwest, who moved down to Florida just before or after retiring. Some
started out as seasonal Florida residents before they moved to Florida full time. There are about a
dozen mobile home residents that are still seasonal and only come to Silver Sands in the winter.
My sample does not include these residents.
14
For the last 9 months I have cultivated the ethnographic practice of participating in all
aspects of residents’ daily lives, especially their attempts to grapple with the park closure and the
actors that manage their relocation. I live in Silver Sands Mobile Home Park full time and
interact with residents in some capacity almost every day. My interactions with residents range
from relaxing and talking on their patios, doing laundry together in the community laundry room,
and having dinner with their families to attending Town Hall meetings with neighbors, helping
residents navigate state websites or request necessary forms, and following residents to meetings
with the developer, their Legal Aid attorney, or the managers of parks where they are moving.
As we enter the period in which residents begin to relocate their homes I also help residents
pack, host them in my home, wait with them as their houses are dismantled and loaded, and
follow with them behind their homes as they are hauled to various surrounding parks. My daily
documentation of these events consist of both field notes and up to a dozen sets of audio
recordings, which I later transcribe.
In order to more fully understand the interpretations, anticipated options, and strategic
decisions of individual residents, I also conduct interviews with a range of residents in the
community. I have undertaken a series of longitudinal in-depth interviews with a representative
sample of about 28 residents. The goal is to interview a larger sample of mobile home park
residents than I encounter in my daily life within the park. Specifically, an important aim of
conducting an oversample of interviews is to ensure that I talk at length with residents whose
activity in the public life of the park is very limited, in this case due primarily to health concerns
which keep a number of Silver Sands residents homebound.
I immediately began to interact with my neighbors and found it quite easy to meet people
within the community. Silver Sands is home to about 130 residents in about 95 mobile homes.
15
As many within Silver Sands are retirees from other parts of the country who have come to enjoy
the Florida weather and lifestyle in their retirement years, it has been consistently easy to
encounter people outdoors or on their porches every day.
After a long process of city council approval of a land use change on 4 acres of our 30acre mobile home community, we received our formal eviction notices on October 24th, 2012. In
Florida such notices give mobile home residents 6 months to vacate the property. This paper
draws upon the nine months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted from the time I moved into
Silver Sands in June 2012 through the end of February 2013.
Findings
Residents of Silver Sands have been informed that there are certain regulations meant to
ease the transition of residents of mobile home parks that close in Florida. These protections are
offered at the city and state level, as no federal protections for residents of land lease parks
currently exist. Residents in Florida have three primary protections when the park where they
reside is closing to be redeveloped. One is provided by local governments and the other two are
provided by a state agency.
First, because the company purchasing Silver Sands wishes to redevelop it into a mixeduse planned unit development (PUD), an application for a change of zoning of the piece of the
property to be converted from residential to commercial must be filed with the town. This
requires a series of Town Council approvals in which the entire Town Council, including the
Mayor and Vice-Mayor, vote to approve or reject the rezoning. This means that a total of three
town meetings are required before the zoning change can be approved and residents can receive
a formal eviction notice. As part of the same process, the State of Florida mandates that when a
16
mobile home park owner applies for a change of zoning of the park, a) the owner must notify all
residents of this application within 5 days of filing for such a zoning change, b) the park must
advertise the dates that the local governing body will hear the zoning change application, and c)
the local government must decide as part of those hearings that adequate facilities exist for the
relocation of mobile home park residents (FL State Statues 723.081). This statute ensures that
no zoning change on a closing mobile home park can be approved without park residents having
some opportunity to speak in front of their elected officials and without these officials
considering at least one aspect of relocating residents.
At the state level, Florida has instituted important regulations for mobile home park
residents that are outlined in the Florida Mobile Home Act.6 First park residents must be given at
least a 6-month notice of eviction due to a projected change of use of the park property. Second,
residents must be informed that they may be entitled to compensation from the Florida Mobile
Home Relocation Trust Fund administered by the Florida Mobile Home Relocation Corporation
(FMHRC) (FL State Statue 723.061). The FMHRC was established by the Florida Mobile Home
Act and its main purpose is to provide residents with relocation monies - $2,750 for a single
section mobile home and $3,750 for a multisection mobile home – through its trust fund. These
funds are explicitly to assist homeowners with the cost of relocating their home to another
mobile home park.
The State of Florida is unique in the protections it offers for residents of mobile home
parks. According to CFED (July 2010), only five other states have eviction notice periods of 60
6
The Florida Mobile Home Act is the official short title for Title XL, Chapter 723 of the 2012
Florida Statues. It is overseen by the Florida Department of Business and Professional
Regulation. The provisions of this act apply to any residential tenancy in which a mobile home is
placed on a leased lot in a mobile home park that contains 10 or more lots.
(http://www.myfloridalicense.com/dbpr/lsc/MobileHomes.html)
17
days or more. Only nine other states have what CFED determined to be strong or medium-strong
regulations requiring that all residents must be notified in the event of a park closure. In addition,
Florida has a state agency and trust fund set up to financially assist residents who wish to
relocate their home and provide them with minimum compensation – in the amount of $1300 – if
they abandon their home within the closing mobile home park.
During my first five months living in Silver Sands, and over the next four moths after
receiving our formal eviction letter, it became clear that despite the legally mandated functions
of local and state agencies in Florida, other interests shaped and sometimes overtly undermined
the intent of these protective regulations.
Understanding the process
At the point that I moved into Silver Sands in June 2012, residents had received notice
that their mobile home community had applied to the Town for rezoning on a portion of its 29acre parcel of land. Shortly afterward, in April 2012, the owner of the park held a meeting in the
park’s rec. room. At this meeting residents met the buyer of the property, a development
company called Southern Property Holdings. Residents explain that they were told a number of
things at this first meeting and in conversations with the developer’s primary representative,
Jonathan Lerner. All of these claims were verified by the forms that the developer handed out at
this and following meetings, by my transcription of one of the resident’s recording of this
meeting, and later by representatives of the developer when they addressed the Town Planning
and Zoning Commission and the Town Council.
First, residents were told that they had not yet been evicted because the developer still
needed to gain approval from Town Council for a land use change on part of the property to be
18
zoned commercial, in order for the sale of the property to be final. If the desired zoning changes
were approved, residents were told they would then receive a 6-month notice of eviction.
Second, residents were told they would receive $1,375 from the State of Florida if their home
could not be moved and $3000 if their home could be moved. Additionally they were told they
could receive up to $10,000 in relocation costs – including the $3000 in state funds - if they
moved to a mobile home community owned by Clearwater Communities and they were given a
brochure of four different Clearwater Communities in a 50-mile radius. They were told in this
initial meeting and under oath at the Town Council meetings that they would also receive a flat
deposit of $1000 to cover moving costs and that the developer would provide movers to assist
with packing and moving. Since the first Town meeting was postponed several times, most
residents interpreted all this information to mean that they would have a lengthy period of
adjustment before they needed to begin to relocate.
Two streets up from me, Christy lives with her aging, homebound mother as her full-time
caregiver. As many other residents have done, the first time I meet Christy on August 1st she asks
me if I am aware that the park is for sale:
Christy is sitting out on her porch with two male friends and one female friend. She tells
me, “You know they're going to sell this park eventually?”
The woman next to her chimes in, as if to comfort me, “But sweetheart the thing is that
we haven't even gotten a notice and when we do it will be another 6 months before we
even need to start relocating.” Christy tells me that we could be looking at one year.
Then she says that we are fighting it because we have a lawyer, so it could be 2 years.
19
In rapid succession she tells me that a group of people got together and signed a petition,
that they have a lawyer, that the meeting for next month was supposed to take place this
month but was canceled and moved to September, that this does not mean that the sale
went through, and that the lawyer said that the developer is “running scared.” She sums
up by explaining, “All this means that it could be one year or it could be two years.”
Christy’s summary was echoed by many other residents during the months leading up to the
eviction notice we received on October 24th, 2012. Residents often quoted the phase “a year or
two” to describe how long the process would take. Every single resident I have spoken to, even
those that admitted they knew little about what was going on with the redevelopment, knew that
a 6-month notice period was required and many felt that we would have much longer since we
needed to wait for Town Council approval before the property could be sold and notices could be
handed out.
Residents Expectations
Early on, residents had clear expectations for what they thought would occur at the Town
Council meetings. In almost every conversation I had with residents I met during my first months
of fieldwork, I asked what they expected would happen at the first Town Hall meeting. Many
residents expected that the Town Council would turn down the application for a zoning change
on the Silver Sands property from residential to commercial because, in their minds, more
commercial in our area of town was not needed; the roadway outside of Silver Sands was already
too congested; or the Town Council would not want to attract the media scrutiny of displacing
over 100 senior citizens. Lou comes over to my house on the morning of the second meeting,
which is the first of two meetings we will have in front of the whole Town Council. He is going
20
door to door to make sure everyone in the community knows about the meeting tonight. He
summarizes the interpretation of many others I’ve spoken to by explaining that the meeting is
being held to discuss “what [the park owner] is doing to these people.” He tells me that the town
is “in an uproar” over the treatment of the residents of Silver Sands and the meeting is primarily
“a meeting to discuss what is happening to them since they are all on fixed incomes.”
Those that did not specifically hold hopes of having the rezoning turned down by Town
Council still felt that the meeting was being held to address their concerns. They expected that
the specifics of the relocation would be discussed by the Town Council, that they would gain
some clarity on what assistance they were entitled to, and that the would be told what to expect
in the future. For most, this was their primary reason for attending the first town meeting. Before
the first of the three Town Hall meetings, Tabitha, a frail, mainly homebound woman in her 70s,
tells me that she would not think of missing the meeting next week. The meeting is scheduled for
her birthday and she will start the day by going to dialysis, which she undergoes three times a
week, then she will attend physical therapy and then have a follow up visit for an infection that
she developed after having surgery on her shoulder as a result of a fall in her mobile home.
Despite all this she insists, “I’ll be in the front row if I can.” She does not know yet if she plans
to speak during public comment at the meeting, but she wants to attend to get answers to some
questions: “Where do we go? What we do? How do we pay for this? How do we pay for
moving? It's not like we have bank accounts with $50,000. And then, can you move it? Can your
trailer be moved anyway?” At the first meeting, residents spoke at the podium in Town Hall
under public comment to ask similar questions: “I would like to know how this money is going
to be handled. Who is going to take care of it? Are we going to get it?”
21
My neighbor Gale served in the Air Forced alongside her husband Mark. They live three
doors down from me. Gale prides her self in being a no-nonsense woman and she spoke at the
first meeting as a representative of three generations of her family that live in Silver Sands, her
father and mother-in-law, herself, her husband and her brother-in-law, and her son and his
girlfriend. From my August 18th field notes, Gale speaks directly to the Town Council during
public comment:
Gale: I would appreciate, for my fellow residents, to see some more answers given, some
people coming through with promises they’ve made, a little bit more knowledge for us.
Gale’s voice is very audibly cracking now and she sounds as if she is crying at the
podium.
Gale: Because they are not all 50 or 55 like I am. I know a lot of old people and I think
they deserve better.
Gale is crying so hard she can barely say this last sentence.
Gale: And I would appreciate some answers.
Despite residents’ expectations, during this first meeting and especially in the following two
meetings, these questions were never answered. Instead, members of the Planning and Zoning
Commission and the Town Council directed the developer to get in touch with residents. The
Chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission responded to Gale’s tearful requests and the
comments of others who stated similar concerns by saying, “It sounds to me like the developer
needs to have another meeting with the community ... And perhaps the time to do that is after
these applications have gone through the process.”
By the Commission Chair’s stated rationale, residents concerns relating to the conditions of
22
their relocation from a 40-year-old mobile home park within the town are best handled, not by
the town, but by the private developer who’s primary interest is clearing the property for
construction. Further more, as the Chair makes clear in this statement, the best time for securing
the residents relocation rights is not before approval when the town still has power to reject the
necessary zoning change, but after the application has been approved and the oversight of the
Town Council is concluded.
Ultimately these meeting did not address the questions residents asked their neighbors and
myself almost daily or the Town Council during public comment. The meetings were primarily
an opportunity for the developer to present their application and provide a justification that it was
“compatible” with the town’s future growth plan and “necessary” due to changing demographics
in the town. Though residents expected the Town to help them understand the developer’s offers
and secure a minimum standard of assistance, both the Planning and Zoning Commission and the
Town Council merely voted that they were satisfied that the developer had stated that they would
meet the state statutory regulations and the additional conditions set by the town staff. From my
September 18th fieldnotes:
The Mayor then asks the council if they are satisfied from both the verbal and written
presentation that adequate parks exists, and not only that adequate physical parks exist
but also that there is an adequate mechanism for relocating residents there.7 All of the
members of council agree that they are satisfied. There is very little discussion on this
Florida statute, 723.083 dictates that: “No agency of municipal, local, county, or state
government shall approve any application for rezoning, or take any other official action, which
would result in the removal or relocation of mobile home owners residing in a mobile home park
without first determining that adequate mobile home parks or other suitable facilities exist for the
relocation of the mobile home owners.” This is the entire section, no further directives on the
definition of “adequate and suitable” are given.
7 The
23
point. The Mayor announces that they have consensus within 1 minute.
Next, they vote on the change to the future land-use map amendment from residential to
commercial. All members vote yes.
In the end, each town meeting was shorter and more concise than the last. The final meeting was
finished within two hours while the first lasted four hours. In each meeting both the planning
staff and the developer presented the same summary of relocation assistance being offered to the
residents. Both the commission and council acknowledged that they were satisfied that state
statues and town conditions for approval were met, but when residents spoke to ask specific
questions they deferred to the developer, recommending that the developer hold a meeting with
residents in the future to address these concerns.
Confusion and attrition among residents
By the time of the first and second Town Hall meetings –in August and September 2012 residents desired to attend to gain clarity on the relocation process and answers to question they
had about their rights and entitlements. However, this was not the attitude of most residents in
the months leading up to these meetings. In the initial months of my fieldwork, after residents
had received the first notice of an application for a rezoning of Silver Sands, residents took
serious steps to resist this redevelopment. These steps included calling local news and print
media, contacting a hotline for Senior Citizens, holding independent meetings within Silver
Sands, establishing legal representation through the Legal Aid Society, and circulating a petition
to keep Silver Sands operating as a park. Several felt, initially, that the representation of their
Legal Aid attorney would either overturn the rezoning of the park or extend the process so long
that the developer might back out of the purchase of the property.
24
However, in the five months between March, when residents first received notice of the
application for rezoning, and August, when the first of the three Town Hall meetings was held,
their attitudes shifted significantly, as this conversation on August 10th between two neighbors,
Tabitha and Betty, illustrates:
Esther: Are you going to go to the meeting next week?
Tabitha: I'll be in the front row if I can. We are planning to meet with ... the legal [Legal
Aid] guy, at 6:30. We don't know what he's actually done for us. We were hoping that he
was either going to get the rezoning not passed or something.
(She thinks for a little while.)
Tabitha: I think a lot of it is that it has gone by for too many months and people are tired.
They just want to know what's happening. So they can make their decision.
Betty: They just want to know what's happening and let's hurry up and get it done and
over with so I can settle down again.
Tabitha: Because it's extremely disruptive, you don't know. If [the park owner] closes the
place it’s going to be, I fear, in a month or if the rezoning gets postponed and postponed
and postponed, so now we’re in September and they have to give us 6 months anyway. So
now we’re into another year. It's unsettling. Like I don't even know–should I replant my
stuff?
The result of the first Planning and Zoning Commission meeting being rescheduled several
times, with no new information being distributed to residents, was that by the first meeting many
residents had already gone through months of waiting for answers and had shifted from an
attitude of resistance to one of acquiescence.
25
During this period, which many residents described as one of endlessly waiting for
information, members of the Town Council met with the developer several times, as evidenced
by their ex parte disclosures during the town meetings. In ex parte disclosures, 4 out of 5 council
members, including the Mayor and Vice-Mayor, disclosed that they had met with representatives
of the development company. Most of these ex parte communications took place throughout the
summer, in the months before the first Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. During the
same period residents repeatedly complained to each other and myself about the difficulty of
getting anyone from the development company to answer their phone or return their phone call.
One council member had met with the developer as early as January of 2012, when the deal was
still a “contract to purchase” and two months before residents had received a notice of the
application for rezoning. Summarizing the ex parte disclosures, the mayor says, “All of that in
hopes of not having this meeting be so lengthy. That is one reason that we've had so many
meetings beforehand with the applicants.” While the mayor expressed her desire for a quick and
efficient review of the developer’s application, many residents had waited months for the
meeting in hopes that the Town Council would address their relocation concerns.
The failed expectations that residents had for the first and second Town Hall meeting,
combined with the 5-month wait for the first Town meeting, the month’s time between each
subsequent meeting, and the expediency with which the Planning and Zoning Commission
approved of the application for full Town Council review, all resulted in significant attrition over
the course of the three meetings. At time of the first meeting on August 18th, which I attended
with my 90-year old neighbor Walter and his daughter-in-law Gale, I had noted this in my
fieldnotes:
Walter looks around the room and says, “Just think of how many people there are in the
26
park and look at how many people are here.” He estimates there are 100 trailers in the
park and probably 150 people. Then he estimates that not 1/10th of the people that live in
the park have come to attend the meeting. I asked him why he thinks that is. He says,
“Actually I don't see what good it would do one way or the other. The zoning board is
going to do whatever the hell they want to do.”
Town Council – local protections for residents
A primary protection in Florida against the closure and redevelopment of mobile home
parks for the residents that live there is the requirement that a local government body approve a
zoning change of a mobile home park to another use and determine that all state statutory
mandates are met for the relocation of residents. In the case of Silver Sands, this Town Council
process clearly demonstrated that residents’ interests were secondary to the growth interests of
the town.
The language used by the developer, the planning and zoning staff, the planning and
zoning commissioners, and the members of the Town Council was heavily punctuated with the
catch phrases of livability and new urbanist discourses. Livability discourses promoted by
Richard Florida’s work on the “creative class” and new urbanism promoted by Andres Duany’s
master-planned communities are both typified by emphasis on dense, mixed-use, walkable, urban
areas with ample opportunities for consumption, employment, transit, recreation, and cultural
interactions in close proximity to residential spaces (Florida 2004 [2002], Duany, Plater-Zyberk
and Alminana 2003). In all three meeting held by the town, the redevelopment of Silver Sands
was presented by both the developer and by the Town’s planning staff as an opportunity to
27
increase the commercial and residential density of the property by providing “351 units of rental
apartment with a lake path, clubhouse, pool, playground area, dog park, half basketball court and
preserve area. Also ... 35,000 square feet of medical office and 25,000 square feet of retail”
according to “a land-use strategy that would facilitate mixed-use development concepts” with
“neighborhood commercial engaged to the street” and a “necklace of green space” that provides
“connectivity” through the property out to the major arterial road and supports “intermodal
activity” through the “relationship of this site to the [town’s] future transit-oriented
development” all while providing the type of housing that is “critical to meeting the expanding
needs of our employers in the area” (comments from principal town planner and representative
for developer, August 16).
The concepts most often evoked to support the developer’s application for the
redevelopment of Silver Sands was that the Town had itself “set the stage for this kind of
development” and “facilitate[d] the project that we have before you” through the adoption of
2006 EAR-based amendments to its comprehensive plan which promoted transit-oriented
development in the vicinity of a planned future tri-rail stop. The developer shows a slide at all
three of the meetings that depicts the property of Silver Sands with a buffer around it, which
highlights that it is between ½ and ¾ mile to a future tri-rail stop. Representatives of the
developer also point out that, although the town has not yet begun to develop infrastructure for
tri-rail transit, it is important to “establish a land use pattern” now that will “be supportive and
complementary to the federal funding that’s required to ultimately deliver such an intermodal
activity” (all quotes taken from developer’s comments to P&Z Commission, August 16).
The same images are used to highlight the other major creative class concept invoked by
the developer and enthusiastically seconded by the Town Council – the proximity of the site to
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major employers in the area in the field of medicine, technology and education and the hope that
additional housing in the vicinity of these employers will attract more talent for these
professions. The medical center especially is called “one of the town’s most important assets,”
and a letter of support from the hospital CEO is projected on a screen and distributed to the
Town Council. In this letter, the CEO claims that the hospital “competes regionally” for
employees and sees additional housing in the area as “a great asset.” In summary, the developer
projects a slide that compares the current development of the Silver Sands property to the
proposed development. On one side, under the heading “Current,” it simply lists only “151
mobile home sites.” On the other side, under the heading “Proposed,” its lists “351 apartments,
35,000 sq. feet or medical space and 25,000 sq. feet of office space.”
In the end, the Town Council inquires about several details of the plan but does not take
serious issue with any part of it. The Mayor states to the attendees at the meeting that she is:
... glad to see the buyer has been meeting with the residents and trying to come up with a
plan to provide additional facilities ... Overall the opportunity to have additional
workforce housing is very important to us. That is a great location for the reasons that
we heard. So I think that it’s going to be quite good.
The Town Council votes unanimously in favor of the zoning change.
Over the course all three meetings, the disclosures of numerous ex parte meetings between
Town Council members and development staff; the language of the Town council and planning
staff used to describe the project; and the expediency with which they approved the application
to rezone Silver Sands all demonstrate that Town officials privileged developer’s interests at the
expense of current residents, mainly because the redevelopment plans for Silver Sands fit
29
seamlessly into the growth agenda of the Town. The vernacular used by the developer described
a more livable, walkable, urbane community with the amenities and proximity to technological
and medical employment hubs that are particularly suited to attracting the vibrant young working
professionals that the city desires as its workforce. Because of this, the Town Council approved
the development of ‘workforce housing’ over existing affordable housing, despite differences in
actual costs. While lots at Silver Sands are between $300 and $400 a month and most residents
own their homes, the 2-bedroom apartments in the new development that are set aside as lowincome rental units based on market rates are estimated to rent for $1139 a month. When a
member of the Town Council inquired about these rates – since the developer had received
several density bonuses for providing some affordable housing in the new development –
Jonathan Lerner pointed out:
We are not intending to provide a housing subsidy program. It is not HUD housing, it is
not government-sponsored housing. We are intending to provide workforce housing per
your comp plan for the Town for their critical employees ... So while the income
restrictions are not as low as they would be for some HUD-financed housing, they are a
subsidy that is provided to what the Town considers to be their workforce.
The planning staff of the Town did work closely with the developer to create a set of
additional regulations that went above and beyond the state regulations for relocating residents,
but in the end, these regulations were self-enforced by the developer and not carried out.
Ultimately the town outsourced all of the protections for residents to the developer himself,
putting residents’ interests even more squarely into the developer’s hands and entrusting the
developer to oversee all aspects of the relocation. There is no system of review to ensure that the
30
development company comes through on the many promises it publicly made as conditions of
approval meant to ensure that its application was passed by Town Council.
The State –Statutory protections for residents
Silver Sands is illustrative of redeveloping mobile home parks in Florida in that the local
governing body was responsible for the approval of zoning changes and the approval that all
state statutory schemes were met. All other assistance for Silver Sands residents was at the state
level in Florida. According to the Florida Mobile Home Act, these state requirements consist
mainly of a regulation that mandates a 6-month notice period and a trust fund that administers
relocation monies for residents. However, to manage the relocation of Silver Sands residents, the
state relied exclusively on the purchaser of the property and the private companies involved in
moving, transporting, reinstalling, and leasing lots to the homes. These private companies carry
out most aspects of the relocation process and thus shape how this process unfolds for residents.
The efficiency and profit seeking of these companies is at odds with the state-mandated
protection period of 6 months. Thus, in both subtle and overt ways these companies put pressure
on residents to move where and when the companies dictate.
Moving where
Florida Statutes mandate that local governments determine that other adequate parks exist
for the relocation of mobile homes, and state that FMHRC monies can be used to relocate a
mobile home within a 50-mile radius of a closing park. Because the statues do not clarify how
“adequate facilities” are defined and because the developer of Silver Sands partnered with
Clearwater Communities to relocate the homes, Silver Sands residents were channeled away
31
from privately owned parks within their own town and directed toward Clearwater parks up to 30
miles away. In meetings and in materials distributed to residents, they were presented with four
different Clearwater Communities parks as their options for relocation. The majority of residents
told me that these parks were their only options if they wanted to receive any relocation money.
Others looked into the matter further and determined that they could move to other parks and still
receive the state funds. However these residents also told me either that the state funds would not
be enough to hire an independent mover; that they were unable to find a mobile home mover that
was available; or that they were told that the mover contracted by the developer for Silver Sands
was contracted only to move homes to Clearwater Communities. As one frustrated resident,
Kathleen, summarized, “I'm sorry but that whole deal is so freaking crooked. I guess the contract
is – [the mover] moves the trailers and we get no choices but four [Clearwater] Communities...
Their so-called contract! They’re dictating to us!” Kathleen goes on to explain that in her
understanding, there is a contract between the mover and Clearwater Communities and that we
residents are all involved in that contract without ever having signed that contract. By the end of
February 2013, only 1 park resident within my acquaintance – which includes about 80% of the
park – had contracted with an outside mover.
Moving when
Providing residents with a 6-month notice period in the event of a park closure is one of
the most important mandates in the Florida Mobile Home Act. As noted above, only five other
states have minimum notice periods of 60 days or more for closing mobile home parks.
Residents of Silver Sands did indeed receive an eviction notice on October 24th that stated that
they had 6 months to vacate the property. However, because the details of the relocation process
were entrusted entirely to the developer, who organized the relocation with a private moving
32
company and a privately-owned mobile home park management company, the 6-month period
that residents expected was significantly curtailed.
Southern Property Holdings, the purchaser and developer of Silver Sands, was charged
with organizing the relocation process on behalf of the residents. The developer arranged with
two private companies to relocate the homes, a mobile home mover and a company that owns
mobile home parks in Florida. During the same period that Silver Sands was entering the final
zoning change approval and the final sale of the park, another nearby mobile home community –
home to 750 mobile homes and 1500 residents – was also closing. Once residents received their
formal eviction notice, which clearly stated that they had a 6-month period to vacate the
property, they began to receive phone calls putting pressure on them to select a date to move.
Residents were told that movers would be stretched thin moving the residents from the
neighboring park and were only offered moving dates from November through January.
After meeting with the moving company on November 22nd and learning my home could
be moved, I met with representatives of Clearwater Communities to inquire about the latest
possible date that I could move my mobile home. I confirmed that the company was not
scheduling any homes to be moved after January. They insisted that they simply could not justify
scheduling a single home move in April if I wanted to stay until the final date of our tenancy,
May 1st. They repeated told me that it would not be safe for me to stay in Silver Sands until May
when the majority of the homes had been moved out because of potential vandalism. From my
November 13th fieldnotes:
During a visit to the relocation office to ask about scheduling a moving date near the end
of our residency, May 1, I ask how late they are scheduling homes to move. The
33
representative tells me that some people have said they wanted to wait until the very end
and he simply cannot do this. Then he tells me that I do not want to wait until the end
anyway. He says, “towards the end you're going to start having certain homes left, only a
number of them, and people start to come into parks like that and start to do things at night
and it's not safe for you to be here and it's not safe for them to be here. When it's a half
empty park and it looks like it's closing and being abandoned, people start coming in and
doing bad things.” He goes on to say that there are a couple different reasons why he can't
schedule the homes to move at the end. He says that first everyone would want to wait until
the end because the lot rent is cheaper here. However, he points out, if you wait until the
end then there are going to be problems not only with moving but also with vandalism and
personal safety. He reiterates that really it is a “safety issue” and he says that most
residents do not know what it's like to be in a park with only 20 residents left but he knows
what it's like to be in these parks because he has seen it. He says, “I've done this before so
I know what happens, is not good to be the last homes in the park. I’ve seen all types of bad
stuff happen."
Pressure to move as soon as possible has come from both sides. As noted, the mover has
scheduled homes to be moved as soon as possible and has refused to schedule them to be moved
after January, three months after we received our eviction notice and three months before the
state mandated date to vacate the property. Additionally, the mobile home parks owned by
Clearwater Communities have put pressure on residents to move within two months after the
eviction notice was delivered. On my visits to two different Clearwater Communities in the
months before the final Town Hall meeting and delivery of the eviction notice, I was told by park
managers that they would hold lots that Silver Sands residents had reserved for the entire 6-
34
month notice period. As one manager insisted on October 3rd, “They've got a place to come to at
the end of it. We’re okay with that.” Residents told me that they had also been assured that the
various Clearwater Communities would hold their reserved lots for them.
However after the zoning change was approved, the parks where residents reserved lots
immediately began to call them to inform them of the dates that they were scheduled to be
moved. They claimed that they could not ensure that they would hold lots for residents for longer
than 2 months. They cited the closure of the nearby park as one reason that lots might be given
away.
Like many other residents, Kathleen told me during the summer and fall, that she planned
to move as late as possible to take advantage of the low rent at Silver Sands and avoid
the rent increase of $200 that residents will incur when they moved to a Clearwater
Community. She told me in early October that some of her neighbors had spoken to her
about their concerns that there was already a list of scheduled dates for relocating the
homes, even though we had not formally been evicted at this point. Kathleen tells me that
she has insisted to her neighbors that, “They can’t force people to leave when they want
them to leave... They can’t tell you when you’re going to move.” When I see Kathleen on
November 4th for the first time since we received our eviction notices, she tells me that
she had not even received all of her notices (some residents received up to eight copies of
the notice) when the manager of the community where she had reserved a lot called her
to inform her that they had scheduled her to move on January 11th. Now with an
exhausted shrug she just says, “That’s the way it is.”
Over the next few weeks in early November, it became clear that all residents that were
scheduled to move were schedule in November through January, many during the weeks of
35
Thanksgiving and Christmas. Residents were told that with permitting and installation, there
would be a 4-6 week period before they would be able to move back into their homes. This has
meant that residents have been displaced from their homes during the holiday season. The
developer initially stated, under oath at Town Hall meetings, that there would be some assistance
for housing during the period that residents could not be in their homes. In practice, the only
housing assistance that has been given is the option to rent out the former homes of Silver Sands
residents who abandoned their homes because they could not or did not want to move them.
Although these homes are often in poorer condition than the ones the residents own and are
moving, the development company has insisted on charging rent of $15 a day or $450 a month
plus a $100 deposit. This is substantially more than the rents that most residents are currently
paying in the park, where rents range from $300-$400.
Conclusion
During the first months of research, many residents expressed high hopes for what the
state and local government could provide for them. They believed that the local government
would either strike down the redevelopment of their mobile home park or directly assist residents
in finding alternate housing. Once it became clear to the residents that their Town Council would
not interfere with the development process and the state of Florida would not dictate the terms of
the relocation process, but would only provide funds for relocation, residents expectations
shifted. Residents dropped their Legal Aid lawyer as they became disappointed with his inability
to make demands on their behalf, they stopped calling local media to report on their story, and
they did not make public comments at or even attend the final meeting of the Town Council.
36
This ethnographic research shows that mobile home park closures are seriously disruptive
to park residents and that when faced with relocation residents plan to take advantage of state
resources meant to assist with the relocation process. Accessing relocation assistance offered by
the state was the first priority for almost every resident I encountered in the research. Even those
that had not yet made relocation plans - in this case because of lack of funds or serious health
problems, such as stroke, that inhibited them from formulating plans - still spoke primarily of
accessing state money as their primary means of dealing with their precarious living situation.
Because Southern Property Holdings is charged with the task of applying for state monies
on behalf of residents and distributing the funds to private companies with which it formed
contracts, residents have little room to maneuver to secure more equitable treatment or better
financial or practical options. In general, the relocation arrangement at Silver Sands is one in
which residents must contact representatives from these private companies to ensure their rights
to state-mandated protections. Although Florida is a model in the number and kind of protections
it offers for mobile home residents (CFED July 2010), these protections are delivered according
to the neoliberal logic of a housing policy that relies upon the private sector to actualize statemandated safeguards.
Even items that are state mandated – namely, ensuring that a 6 month notice period was
given - were ultimately dictated by what was most efficient and profitable to the companies
involved in the relocation. The developer did indeed assist residents in acquiring the state funds
to move and then supplemented these funds in the amount it had agreed upon with the Town’s
planning staff. However, these funds come in the form of a voucher that must be given to an
approved moving company. By moving time residents were so worried about losing relocation
monies as a result of being unable to be scheduled by the mover Southern Property Holdings had
37
chosen or losing a spot at one of the Clearwater Communities the developer had approved, that
they willingly self-evicted months before the state-mandated 6-month notice period that many
had planned to utilize.
During the same period, the Town Council process, with its many delays, had the effect
of transforming the subjectivities of Silver Sands residents and producing misunderstandings of
how the relocation would be handled. This production of confusion ultimately transformed
residents attitudes from ones in which people were actively calling news stations, securing probono legal assistance, and making their voices literally heard – through angry outburst and
shouting at the first community and Town Hall meetings – to one in which residents told me
frequently that they didn’t care anymore, that they “just want it done and over with” (Randall,
October 7th), that the process was “so unsettling” (Tabitha, August 10th), and that “if you try to
fight a closing eventually you get nothing for your mobile home” (Jenn, August 7th).
This is an important component of a more general production of confusion that pervades
almost every step of this process. After a period of seemingly endless waiting to receive
assistance and information from local leaders, residents were told by their Town Council that
they should address the developer with lingering questions. Because of this, residents do not
know if they are getting valid information, if they have other options, if they can call upon any
one to advocate for them, or if there is any reason to collectively organize. Over this period they
transition from attitudes of resistance to attitudes of acquiescence as they begin a process of
passively waiting. In the words of one resident, “What can we do? What is there to do? We just
have to grin and bear it.”
This research reveals that two contemporary housing trends work together not only to
propel mobile home park closures, but also to shape the trajectories of evicted residents in their
38
wake. First, “creative class” arguments for redevelopment create a platform for demolishing
existing affordable housing in favor of privately-developed “workforce” housing meant to attract
an imagined class of vital workers and consumers. Developers mobilize popular “livability”
(Florida 2004 [2002]) and new urbanist (Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Alminana 2003)
development discourses to demonstrate how their plans to redevelop existing low-income
communities complement and promote the growth agenda of the town. Second, the neoliberal
regulation of affordable housing justifies the transfer of state-mandated protections for mobile
home park residents into the hands of local governments and provides a rationale for local
governments to relinquish control of these protections to the private actors who profit from the
churn on evicted and displaced residents. Thus, non-state actors determine most aspects of the
relocation process and shape how this process unfolds for residents. Despite state-mandated
protections, the efficiency and profit seeking of these companies has meant that, in both subtle
and overt ways, these companies put pressure on residents to move where and when the
companies dictate. This occurs even within a state such as Florida that has model state legislation
and a uniquely protective regulatory climate for mobile homeowners.
39
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