Low-income tenants lack options as old mobile home parks are razed
Mobile home parks are among the few affordable options that remain for extremely low-income people
PHOENIX (AP) — Alondra Ruiz Vazquez and her husband were comfortable in Periwinkle Mobile Home Park for a decade, feeling lucky to own their mobile home and pay about $450 a month for their lot in a city with spiraling rents.
But now they and dozens of other families have until May 28 to leave Phoenix park, which nearby Grand Canyon University purchased seven years ago to build student housing. Two other mobile home communities are also being cleared this spring for new developments in a city where no new parks have been built in more than 30 years.
“I'm here, well, because I have nowhere to go,” said Isabel Ramos, who lives at Periwinkle with her 11-year-old daughter. “I don't know what's going to happen.”
The razing of older mobile home parks across the United States worries advocates who say bulldozing them permanently eliminates some of the already limited housing for the poorest of the poor. Residents may have to double up with relatives or live in their cars amid spiking evictions and homelessness, they warn.
