| NEWS | Katya Schwenk Periwinkle from p 9 Alondra Ruiz Vazquez joined the protesters on September 19. Ruiz has lived in the park with her husband for almost eight years, she said. Over the past several months, she banded together the park residents and pushed to save her home. “It feels so emotional,” she said as passing cars honked in support. “We love our community. We’ve known each other for so long.” When Ruiz and others were informed that they had six months to leave, many didn’t even know GCU owned the property, residents said. They had only interacted with a property management company. The Periwinkle Mobile Home Park is just a small piece of the university’s plan for an expanded 400-acre campus. ‘They Think We’re Trailer Trash’ Sylvia Herrera, a longtime community orga- nizer in Phoenix with the Barrio Defense Committee, is helping organize the residents and negotiate with GCU. She told New Times that the homeowners want proper compen- sation for the upheaval that the evictions will cause. “We need a different model other than kicking people out,” she said. Residents have access to funds from the state — for most, $7,500 per trailer — to move their homes to a new location. In reality, relo- cating the structures is not an option for many residents. Some of their trailers are old and too structurally unsound to be transported. Even if the trailers could be moved, many parks won’t accept trailers over a certain age. Some residents may face abandoning their homes, an asset that sometimes has been passed down through generations. If they leave their trailer at the park, they are limited to $1,875 in state compensation. Ruiz remembered the anxiety that filled the park when the first notice went out to resi- dents in April. “We all knew we didn’t have any options,” she said. She expected many would be without a place to live. Even now that the deadline has been extended, that anxiety has not ebbed, she said. Gerald Suter, who braved the heat to come Alondra Ruiz Vazquez is one of several dozen residents who on September 19 protested GCU’s plan to evict the Periwinkle Mobile Home Park. out to protest like he did in June, said he is worried about what will become of him in May. The 83-year-old said that for a time when he was in elementary school, he and his family were homeless. For the last 28 years, however, Suter has lived peacefully in the Periwinkle Mobile Home Park. “I sleep. I dream about being on the street. I wake up,” he said. “They think we’re trailer trash,” Suter commented. But the Periwinkle residents, he added, “are the finest people you’ll ever meet.” As apartment rents skyrocket in metro Phoenix, mobile homes are often a rare, stable refuge for low-income people. The residents who spoke with New Times had lived in the Periwinkle park for more than five years. Several had lived there for decades. Slowly, though, the rush of development in Phoenix has threatened these refuges. Out-of-state investors, in some cases, have bought mobile home parks around the state with plans to redevelop the land or convert the parks into vacation spots for tourists in RVs. Since the first Periwinkle protest in June, GCU has said it would pair residents with housing counselors from Trellis, a nonprofit that generally focuses on home ownership assis- tance. The school also said in its August 30 letter that it would provide unspecified assistance. GCU also offered free academic tutoring to children in the Periwinkle park for a year, which some residents found in poor taste. Ruiz noted that GCU had been a neighbor for years without offering educational resources to the community. As the protest came to a close, residents gathered to plan ahead. Before the end of the month, they will be meeting with Trellis and GCU to negotiate. Yellow flyers that demon- strators handed out outlined their demands: compensation for all park residents and a tran- sition plan, outlined in a four-year contract. They also want whatever multifamily develop- ment GCU plans for the property to include affordable housing for low-income residents. 11 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES SEPT 29TH–OCT 5TH, 2022
