Miami wants to demolish a riverside mobile home park. Residents want a chance to stay
Carlos J. Rodriguez has lived for 30 years in a modest mobile home on the south bank of the Miami River, next to the 27th Avenue bridge. He bought the unit with money he’d saved up from his job as a courthouse clerk in 1989 and placed the structure on a lot he rents in the Paradise Mobile Home Park.
Rodriguez can afford the $600 rent with his modest retirement income of $1,500 a month. His trailer, which has unpermitted additions that include a closet and carport, sits on a corner lot near 34 other trailers that run the gamut from decent to derelict. Some homes look sturdier than others. The area, residents say, attracts drug dealing and prostitution from outsiders, a problem that calls for more policing.
Now, Rodriguez fears he’ll be kicked out of his neighborhood after the city slapped all of the 35 remaining mobile homes with serious code violations earlier this year, citing illegal alterations and unsafe conditions. City officials are recommending demolition of 34 of the homes over problems that cannot be corrected, an attorney for the residents said, leaving many wondering where they would go.
More than 100 residents would be displaced.
The residents wonder what these problems are — their notices list no specifics. Administrators have told an attorney representing the homeowners that the mobile homes are beyond repair without being specific about what needs to be done.
“For me, a more expensive rent will be very difficult,” Rodriguez told the Miami Herald after a homeowners meeting on Sept. 23.
Paradise Mobile Home Park has been subject to special attention in the past, with harsh consequences. In 2013, when there were 100 mobile homes in the park, a coalition of city and state authorities swept through the park looking for code violations and drugs while removing people from what officials described as “uninhabitable” conditions at the time. The area has a history of drug activity and prostitution.
There are 35 homes left, and several residents say they want to be left to live in homes they can afford. Nejla Calvo, an attorney with Legal Services of Greater Miami who specializes in representing mobile home parks, informed current homeowners of their right to take their concerns to City Hall. All of the cited properties are scheduled to go before the city’s unsafe structures panel on Oct. 4, with 34 of the 35 being recommended for demolition, according to Calvo.
So a group of neighbors went to the Miami commission meeting Thursday to protest the citations before elected officials during a budget hearing. Commissioner Wifredo “Willy” Gort said he’s working to set up meetings between the homeowners and the city administrators to reach a resolution.
At the meeting, Gort said he wants to work it out, though crime has plagued the area for a long time.
“We’ve been working on this for years,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of problems in the trailer park.”
Rodriguez acknowledged issues with drugs and prostitution, but he said troublemakers come from outside the area.
“You’re right. There’s a lot of delinquency in that area,” Rodriguez said to Gort. “But those aren’t people that are living there. They are people that are coming from outside coming into that area.”
Calvo suggested the city might tap federal community development grants to assist the residents in bringing their homes up to code — a suggestion Mayor Francis Suarez said was worth exploring.
“She had a good idea,” Suarez said.
Calvo congratulated her clients on expressing their concerns to elected officials and getting commitments to more meetings.
“This is because these folks came to speak at this hearing today,” she said.
The situation at Paradise Mobile Home Park brings into sharper focus a dilemma for city officials facing a housing affordability crisis: Should the city work to maintain some of the cheapest housing, including investing in bringing mobile home properties up to code, in order to preserve affordability?
Commissioner Ken Russell said he was glad to hear from residents who brought up an issue that surfaces across Miami. He suggested that the city take a broader view on balancing strict code enforcement with people’s desire to live in cheap housing.
“I’d like for us to work on this holistically, because we don’t want people to be afraid of reporting slum conditions — not that there are slum conditions there — but sometimes that’s what leads to the repair or demolish notices, that leads to evictions,” he said.
This story was originally published September 30, 2019 at 4:00 AM.
