11 March 23rd–March 29th, 2023 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | cONTeNTs | feeDBacK | OPiNiON | NeWs | feaTuRe | NighT+Day | culTuRe | film | cafe | music | Getting the Boot Mobile home park residents plead for Phoenix to stop evictions. BY KATYA SCHWENK T he city of Phoenix is consid- ering several ways to halt evic- tions that are displacing mobile home park residents across the Valley. At an emotional meeting of the City Council’s Community and Cultural Investment Subcommittee on March 6, councilmembers heard from residents at three different Phoenix trailer parks that are facing evictions in the coming weeks. In more than an hour and a half of testi- mony, residents and supporters pleaded with the elected officials to take action to stop the evictions. Councilmembers Betty Guardado, Carlos Garcia, and Yassamin Ansari voted to bring several policy suggestions to the full city council, including a moratorium on any development of the three mobile home parks facing evictions. “It’s true that landlords and their friends at the state Capitol have tied the hands of the city in many different ways,” Guardado said at the meeting. “But the residents who have brought us their testi- mony today and over the past months deserve real leadership.” The policies proposed by Guardado, Garcia and Ansari will have to be approved by the full council — which may be a chal- lenge. For residents of the three mobile home parks discussed at the meeting, time is ticking. ‘Traumatized’ The residents who testified on March 6 included homeowners at the Periwinkle Mobile Home Park in west Phoenix, which is owned by Grand Canyon University. In April 2022, the university gave residents just six months to leave their longtime homes in order to redevelop the property. That deadline has now been extended to May 28, 2023. The other two parks are Las Casitas — which is located at 18th Avenue and Buckeye Road and is now called Beacon — and Weldon Court in midtown. Residents have until May 1 and April 1, respectively, to leave. A total of 123 households will be affected by the displacement of the three parks. Of those, only 17 have found new housing so far — with just weeks remaining before the evictions. “We’re very traumatized right now,” Alondra Ruiz Vazquez, a resident of the Periwinkle Mobile Home Park, said at the meeting. The looming eviction is causing heightened anxiety for residents, some of whom already have been struggling with health issues, she told the council. Ruiz Vazquez has been fighting for months to organize Periwinkle residents against Grand Canyon University, along- side longtime community organizers Sylvia Herrera and Salvador Reza, both from the advocacy group Barrio Defense Committees. The residents have won some conces- sions from GCU — like promises of compensation and an extended move-out deadline. But it’s not enough, Ruiz Vasquez and others said. Although most residents own their trailers, they don’t own the land on which the trailers sit. Additionally, it can be nearly impossible to relocate the parks’ aging mobile homes as many are too old to be moved without sustaining damage. And even if a mobile home was fit to be moved, the process is expensive, and there are limited places to go. Indeed, Michael Trailor, the executive director of Trellis, a nonprofit that provides housing navigation services to some of the residents at the meeting, told councilmembers that moving the mobile homes to a new location was not a | NEWS | Gerald Suter, who has lived in the Periwinkle Mobile Home Park for nearly 30 years, speaks to residents during a protest in June 2022. Katya Schwenk >> p 12
