Liking People

It is hard to tell someone you like that they must leave the park. We have recently had to do just that, although it was after much soul-searching and talking with friends in the mobile home community for their opinions.

We knew that we had trouble brewing two years ago when we first got here. One of the previous blogs that I wrote talked about a boy breaking off one of the trees we had planted and how we handled that problem. Unfortunately, we knew that someday the family would have to leave the park; the questions that really were there was when and would they leave without us having to formally evict them. We thought we would still have a few years, but the time has come.

We had no less than seven different residents complain about the young boys who lived in one home. Some of them had approached the Grandmother, who we believe is their legal guardian (the mother also lives there, however). Over and over again she would say that she would take care of the problems, but it appeared that she truly had no control of them - at the age of 10.

We gave this family a 60-day notice that we were not renewing their lease as of July 1. They were actually surprised, and started asking other residents if they knew why. (Of course, not many admitted to having talked with us. Many of the residents are related to other residents or family of this particular family.) One of the daughters asked Jim for a copy of complaints, which we refused to supply for obvious reasons.

The tenant told Jim she was intending to be out of the park by July 1, but was not sure if she would move her home or not. On June 30 we got a call from another park asking if we were evicting this family. We were not, although we did tell them that we were not renewing their lease - we believe it is wrong to tell someone else something that will only bring trouble to them in the future. The family was denied entrance into this park.

The tenant then told Jim that she was giving her house back to Greentree and would be out within the week. Greentree has already called us, asking us to secure it as soon as the family is out and telling us we will have the opportunity to buy the home before it hits the list. We buy a lot of Greentree homes and are happy to work with them.

We have yet to truly go into the home, although we have been as far as the kitchen in the past. (Shudder....) This home will more than likely take a large amount of work to bring it up to park standard.

There are many sad parts to this story. The grandmother is a very nice woman, but allows here family to do whatever they wish. Two adult children with disabilities live with her, and all three of the grandchildren also have disabilities. We have heard that they fall asleep in school, which is not surprising to us since they are outside until all hours of the night.

We know that we logically had no choice in this matter. We are making this community a better place to live and this was but one move to do so. Other people's choices do have an effect on the choices we must make for the community to continue to improve.

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