When I was over at the mobile home park office last week, discussing lawn care with Connie, the manager, I joked with her about the recent demolitions I'd seen around the park saying "Is that what happens when you don't pay your lot rent?"
The picture above is the latest demo out of the half dozen or so of late. Not sure what happened to the couple that lived here but I remember them from a TV news interview filmed just after Hurricane Irma caused damage in the area back before I moved here.
Here's that TV news spot from seven years ago. Not sure why audio is bad, but the owner of the now demolished home seen above is being interviewed at 1:24.
These new demolitions are not due to hurricane damage though. It seems to be a new philosophy of the owners of this park. Old units are slowly but surely being replaced with new homes. Homes that, according to the park website and a big old sign at the park entrance, are $62,900 dream homes. Here's a look at one of them.
While I was at the office last week, there was a lady there who was an owner of one of these new units. Apparently she was having problems with her electricity connection, her mailbox, and was experiencing flooding. You can put in a new home in an old park like this but it doesn't mean you're not going to inherit some of the legacy problems. She mentioned that there seems to be a little bit of a division between new homeowners in the newly built units and owners, like me, in the old trailers. Apparently, a lot of the oldsters think we're going to be priced out.
Got to say, it does seem like the writing is on the wall. When they place a brand new manufactured home on this lot, right at the entrance to the park, it'll be the ultimate advertisement. And how long before these owners of these over $60,000 units start to baulk about us poor folk in our sub $20K pieces of crap? Park management might just say, "Sure we'll take care of it," and raise the lot rents to something like $800 a month. Then, where the fuck will I go?
Of course the answer to that is: "nowhere." I will continue to pay the rents to the point that it comes to one of two outcomes: Either I will get evicted for non-payment or I'll end up dying and the house will become park property. So welcome to the future, Shammy, you'll eventually be a crumbled pile of aluminum before long.