Claudia Guerrero Barrera enjoys her role as community engagement specialist for Virginia-based housing nonprofit project:HOMES, spending afternoons sitting around a kitchen table, drinking coffee, and chatting with women in the Bermuda Estates neighborhood of Chesterfield.
They discuss their relief at having persuaded the county to place a school bus to stop in their newly paved cul-de-sac, so the children no longer have to wait on a busy strip of Route 1. They nibble on homemade treats, sharing plans for parties they’ll have at the community center once it is finished.
Less than two years ago, Claudia had never heard of Bermuda Estates...
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There’s one item completely left out of this article:
Less than two years ago, Claudia had never heard of Bermuda Estates Mobile Home Park, and the Bermuda Estates residents she now shares easy chatter with were at that time fearful of being forced out of their homes. The owner, J&J Equities, LLC, was selling the park, and the prospective buyer planned to redevelop the land and build townhomes. This meant the nearly 40 families living at Bermuda Estates would be displaced, their homes, meticulously tended rose gardens and memories plowed under to make way for new homes that would not be affordable to them.
That item is what did they pay?
My bet is that they paid $100,000 per lot or more. And then you have to ask yourself “wouldn’t these people just be better off if they took the $100,000, relocated to a cheaper place than Virginia, and bought a nice stick-built house for cash?”
This whole “let’s buy the park to fend off redevelopment” nonsense is really nothing more than virtue signaling by bureaucrats and non-profits who want acclaim for saving 40 households housing when, for the same money, they could have paid for 160 people to go to college, or 800 people to renovate their homes and lower their utility costs.