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Nearly 350 residents face eviction from the Little Farm Mobile Home trailer park in El Portal, FL and many of them don’t know where to go.
The trailer park was sold for $14 million to Wealthy Delight, a Coral Gables-based company, potentially leaving residents homeless.
“I am very angry. I bought this place to live and now I don’t know where I’m going. I have kids that go to school and I don’t work because I am sick, only my husband works,” Sophia Alexandre, who’s lived in the trailer park for over four years said. “I don’t know what is going to happen to us.”
The new owners gave residents until February of 2016 to move out and offered $2,000 for compensation, when the initial notice of eviction came earlier this year.
El Portal is a small community located about 15 minutes north of downtown Miami.
Now, a group of residents are fighting for their homes and have sued the property’s current and former owners, holding demonstrations and storming Village Council meetings.
The lawsuit alleges that the village of El Portal unlawfully forgave more than $8 million in liens, in exchange for assurances that the new owner would close down the mobile home park.
“Mobile homes are the last form of nonsubsidized affordable housing in Miami Dade County,” Kian White, an attorney who represented the individuals in court told RISE NEWS. “That money they offered doesn’t even get you a first month, last month security.”
The case was dismissed before going to trial but after White’s appeal, the case was put on an expedited track and will be heard on January 6.
“While everyone else gets ahead, these people lose everything,” Frederick said. “It all comes down to the settlement.”
In Florida, according to White, there’s a state law that deals with mobile home parks, which prohibits government action to close or relocate residents of a park without alternative housing.
“The park’s owner has a right to sell the land but they’ve got to do it right,” White said. “The village just didn’t do that.”
In a Miami Herald article, Alejandro E. Jordan, general counsel and real estate advisor to Wealthy Delight, refused to comment on the matter.
“As a matter of firm’s policy, unfortunately we cannot comment on ongoing litigation,” he told the Herald.
A construction crew works on taking down a mobile home in the Little Farm Trailer park in El Portal, FL. Photo Credit: Nicole Montero/ RISE NEWS
Kian Frederick, an organizer working with South Florida Voices for Working Families, a nonprofit social justice organization, said that everyone is making money out of this deal, except for the residents.
“While everyone else gets ahead, these people lose everything,” Frederick said. “It all comes down to the settlement.”
But the settlement doesn’t say anything about the welfare of the residents.
“The village of El Portal just throws them out, doesn’t care and claim they do and we can’t do anything,” Frederick said. “They can do something. They can do zoning. They can zone this place for affordable housing and they can help us negotiate with the owners to get these folks their money.”
Astrude Auguste a 17 year old resident of the Little Farm, said the letter telling them to move came out of nowhere and that her family was not expecting it.
“It’s not like we have money to go somewhere else,” she said. “What are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to go? The problem is not moving. The problem is how we’re going to move. With what? Where’s our money?”
Auguste said that she understands having to move, but she won’t like moving in the middle of the school year.
“I won’t like it, but I guess that’s just what we’re going to have to do,” Auguste said. “I’m really just worried about where we’re going to go. The fact is that we have nowhere to go if they kick us out. We’re losing everything here.”
Life goes on as much as it possibly can in the soon to be leveled Little Farm Trailer park in El Portal, FL. Photo Credit: Nicole Montero/ RISE NEWS
Some people are not allowed to come back to their homes to get their stuff once they’re kicked out, said Auguste.
“So we lose all out stuff and we get kicked out,” Auguste said. “We’re children and families. If it’s just you, you could’ve said ‘OK I’ll stay at a friend’s house for awhile’ but my father has two children living with him. There’s nowhere else to go. Now we’re just waiting.”
Sauveur Blanc, a four-year homeowner at the park, bought his home for $7,000, after years of saving.
“It was hard to save that kind of money,” Blanc said. “I live here legally and I always pay my rent. I feel so sad. I don’t feel well. It is too much for me and there is too much discrimination here. I can’t really tell you what could happen and, right now, I feel very scared. I believe in God and I believe he can do everything for us. That’s what I’m hoping for.”
Frederick said the lawsuit was filed on behalf of some residents because the village of El Portal did not look for an adequate place for residents to go.
“We’re hopeful that in a higher court they’ll have more sense and be able to look at the law because it’s not about keeping the park open, it’s about getting their fair share when everyone else is making money,” Frederick said.
The Village of El Portal was unavailable for comment by time of publication of this story.
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Have You Checked Out RoyMooreForGovernor.com Lately? You Probably Should
Oh Alabama chief justice Roy Moore.
How we love to hate you and your bigoted views on gay people. And apparently we’re not alone.
You see, Roy Moore has twice run for governor (2006 and 2010) and failed both times.
He also failed as a Presidential candidate in 2012 (yep he actually tried to be President).
He is best known however as a national laughingstock that has brought some pretty bad shame to the Yellowhammer state due to his fundamentalist views and intransigence on matters of basic human rights.
But he also seems to be entrenched as chief justice until he is forced out due to his age in 2018.
Until that great day however, you have RoyMooreForGovernor.com.
Created by a guy named Justin Gandy from Russellville, the site brutally mocks Moore for his backward beliefs on gay rights.
Here’s a taste from the site’s homepage, which is posing as a real campaign site for the judge:
“My name is Roy Moore, and I’m committed to making gay people go away because they are icky and Jesus doesn’t love them. Like you, I want to play an active role in making gay people’s lives as miserable as our own. I will work at the community, state and country level to make Alabama a safer, better place to raise our children, run a business, and forge a future filled with unlimited promise that is free from the tyranny of Clay Aiken and Sam Smith. I don’t care how angelic Sam Smith’s voice is I’m not listening to it!”
It also includes an “endorsements” page that is quite nice indeed.
Oh yes please.
Moore could run for governor again in 2018 when his term as chief justice ends, but if he does he’ll have to get creative about his choice for website URL since Gandy owns the domain until 2019.
RISE NEWS has tried reaching out to Gandy and we’ll update this story when we speak to him.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us.
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I’m From The UK And Spent My College Years Fighting The NRA To Keep Guns Off Campus. Here’s What I’ve Learned
I was born in Sweden and grew up in the United Kingdom, a part of the world that conservatives in America denounce for their “cradle to the grave” welfare policies while also being a place that liberals think of as a utopia.
Europeans look at America and are mystified by it’s enduring racism and strange gun laws, but are also drawn to the promise of the American dream.
I was drawn to it too.
In 2013, I moved to Tallahassee, Florida for university.
Unbeknown to me, I had stepped into a National Rifle Association (NRA) battleground state, which would ultimately set the course of the rest of my college career.
Before I stumbled onto the campus carry debate, I had no idea what the term meant. I didn’t pay much attention to Florida politics, so learning that lawmakers wanted to allow people with concealed carry permits to bring their firearms on to campus, with no restrictions, was bewildering.
Which is why I decided to join the Florida Coalition To Keep Guns Off Campus as their Director of Communications.
The UK has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. I’m a fan of those laws. They helped keep me safe.
But I’m not here to force them on my fellow students. I simply want international students like me to have a say when such a dangerous bill could impact us, because my college campus is my home.
Europeans find America’s gun obsession both fascinating and disturbing. We question how a country, a leader in the modern world, struggles with doing anything about their gun violence problem.
It’s an issue unique to the US, when even the majority of police officers in the UK don’t have access to a gun, unless they join a special armed police unit.
In a country of 70 million people, only 6,000 police officers are armed. And the strategy seems to work.
Which is why the concept of arming everyone in society is just absurd to me. Especially on a college campus, where controversial ideas are discussed, students are failed by professors, and alcohol and drugs are frequently used.
I know some proponents of campus carry personally, and in no way am I suggesting that they would harm anyone. On a whole, our political leanings don’t impact how we behave in our day-to-day lives.
But as students, in an environment that essentially promotes, to quote Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa, “living young and wild and free” that is no place for a deadly weapon that can kill people.
To get into the nitty gritty of this, why do lawmakers, some constituents and even some students feel that the only way they’ll be safe is if they have a gun all the time?
Florida state capital complex. Photo Credit: Kristopher Volkman/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
The NRA has peddled the “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” theory to push the narrative that a gun will provide you security because everyone else has one.
And it turns into this never-ending cycle of everyone wanting a gun to protect themselves from each other. The problem is, a “good guy with a gun” only stops a “bad guy with a gun” 3 percent of the time.
But that doesn’t stop the gun lobby. They further push their message out there, grasping on to the national conversation on campus sexual assault, and attempt to use it to their advantage.
Their argument is that a woman should be able to defend herself with a gun on campus if she feels her life is threatened. On its face, that may sound reasonable. The problem is: facts and variables. Every assault is different, and proclaiming that a gun is the answer to all of them is simplistic and ignoring real solutions.
Every time there’s a mass shooting, America is again forced to confront its addiction to guns.
As gun control activists and gun rights proponents face off in the national arena of public opinion, the British watch on in a perplexed manner.
Seeing this over and over again, I’ve come to realize trying to apply a British ideology on guns in the US is useless.
Of course, the statistics speak for themselves, higher rates of gun ownership in the US does equal in higher rates of gun violence. Clearly there is a problem. But the Second Amendment has to make us Europeans take into account the cultural significance of firearms in the US, so we understand why they are so voraciously defended.
For many, the Constitution is their bible (apart from, you know, the Bible). Who am I to dismiss that so casually?
But even when I put that in my pile of things to think about over my morning tea, I also know that the majority of American voters do want more gun regulation.
Even the majority of NRA members want universal background checks. So what is holding the US back?
Again, it’s the gun lobby. The NRA has stopped representing their members, and instead represents gun manufacturers, and with their financial muscle, most politicians cower in their presence.
How does this relate to campus carry? Allowing guns on campus is the NRA’s new mission, and although the political will for it isn’t as readily available even in red states, their campaigns are slowly gaining ground.
In Florida, we’ve managed to beat it two years in a row, but next year is looking to be our toughest yet because the NRA will put this on the top of their priority list and they’ll pour their resources into the Sunshine State.
Marion Hammer, the NRA’s former president turned lobbyist, comes back every session with a determined glint in her eye that admittedly I find a little scary. She’s such an effective lobbyist that Florida is sometimes referred to as the Gunshine State.
One interesting part of this whole conversation has been the NRA’s and Students for Concealed Carry’s manipulation of data.
They’ve compared US and UK violent crime rates, using the numbers as a justification for campus carry, and guns everywhere in general.
It is a completely misleading comparison.
Yes, violent crime rates in the UK are higher per capita. But they forget to mention that the violent crime definitions in the two countries are very different. In the UK, the definition is “all crimes against the person”. This includes bicycle theft, all domestic violence offences, all sexual offences, all assault offences and many more. And even the definitions of those crimes are broader in the UK.
In the US, the FBI definition is much narrower; “violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.” So there is no real way to compare the rates.
Florida House Rep. Julio Gonzalez, (R) made a similar argument, citing a ‘study’, that I later found and read. Two Harvard students who were gun rights activists, not researchers, wrote it. On top of that, the paper was severely criticized by the Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Dr. David Hemenway.
How does the Florida Coalition To Keep Guns Off Campus, a group that just doesn’t have access to resources like the gun lobby, beat them again?
I’ll be honest, I’m concerned.
The logo for the National Rifle Association. Photo Credit: Bart/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
Our continued efforts to combat their problematic ‘solution’ to sexual assault and mass shootings in an educational environment resonates with the majority of students, but will it resonate with legislators in 2017?
It’s certainly interesting that legislators are so ready to consider and pass guns on campus, when every university stakeholder that has spoken out has said they don’t want it. But a bill that would have allowed guns in legislative meetings hasn’t moved forward since last year. A little hypocritical, no? If Florida legislators really believe guns lead to greater safety, then they’d want to flood legislative chambers with them.
As of now, this issue isn’t going away.
Florida is on the NRA’s priority list. Students, staff and faculty need to pull together for the 2017 legislative session.
And what am I doing? I graduate this semester, so I get to go back to my cozy gun-free London, and watch this whole situation unfold from afar.
But now that I’ve gotten to know all these amazing people during our fight against these farcical bills, I know I’ll be somberly watching as they do it again without me.
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VIDEO: Sea Level Rise Is Not Just Impacting Miami Beach In South Florida
By Maria Serrano
As the national debate over climate change intensifies, South Florida has become a flashpoint. And South Florida is much more than South Beach.
On Nov. 24, 2015, fifteen days after king tide day, the largest tidal range seen over the course of a year, the residential neighborhood known as the Upper East Side in Miami was still experiencing floods.
The area has an annual estimated income per household of $45,000.
Similar to Miami Beach, the Upper East Side is a middle-income community facing the consequences of sea level rise, but it has not received the attention or funding necessary to protect its residents, their houses, and small businesses.
Scientists, researchers, legislators and residents recently met at Little River Pocket Park, located in the Northeastern section of the neighborhood, to collect data, learn about sea level rise, and discuss that this is not simply an issue for Miami Beach, but a coastal issue for much of South Florida.
“It’s designed to get citizens involved in being a part of the solution,” Juliet Pinto a, Journalism Professor at Florida International University and organizer of the event for EyesOnTheRise.org said.
More events like this are being planned by EyesOnTheRise.org in the upcoming months to increase the awareness about sea level rise and the consequences for residents of South Florida.
WATCH: Sea Level Rise Impacts In Upper East Side of Miami
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One comment on “These Miami-Area Trailer Park Residents Are Being Kicked Out With Nowhere To Go”
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Is there a precedent set by other cases in Miami?