Florida City trailer park residents who are facing eviction just got a judge’s reprieve
A Miami-Dade circuit judge issued an injunction Wednesday that prohibits Florida City from evicting about 70 people from a trailer park it owns and plans to sell to developers.
Florida City’s attorney last Thursday wrote a letter to the residents of Florida City Camp Site and RV Park telling them they had until Wednesday to leave the property and take their trailers with them. The mostly low-income residents said they were blindsided by the deadline.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Fine Wednesday wrote in his injunction that the March 11 letter violated county and state law.
“Neither the city nor the purported purchaser have provided the Florida-statutory or county-required notices, nor have they afforded the plaintiff and those tenants similarly situated to her due process and rights provided to them by county and Florida law,” Fine wrote.
The Brickell law firm of Damian & Valori, LLP | Culmo Trial Attorneys was hired by an anonymous donor earlier this week to represent the residents, following a Miami Herald article detailing their plight.
Attorney Thomas Culmo filed a motion for the injunction Tuesday. Resident Cheri Terrasas “and those tenants similarly situated to her” are the plaintiffs in the case.
Fine said the injunction is effective immediately and is in effect until his next order.
He wrote that not only would evicting the trailer park’s residents be unlawful, it would also make them “homeless in the midst of a global pandemic and drastic economic downturn.”
Community activist Carmen Tejada, who has been working on residents’ behalf for the past two weeks to try buying them more time before they have to find new homes, praised Fine’s decision.
“Finally, at least some breathing room for these people that have been breathless for the last week,” Tejada told the Miami Herald.
Residents pay about $450 a month, including utilities, to live at Florida City Camp Site and RV Park. Not only are they concerned they won’t be able to find a new home, they also worry that when they do, it will come with rents they can’t afford. Most of the tenants are on fixed, government-assisted incomes.
Florida City Mayor Otis Wallace said the injunction “had no effect” because he had already instructed the city attorney this week not to go through the evictions “until further notice.”
“The injunction didn’t stop anything,” Wallace said.
Florida City is in the process of selling the 15-acre lot, at Krome Avenue and Northwest Seventh Street, to developers the Treo Group. The plan, Wallace said, is to build a mixed-use residential-shopping complex with market-rate apartments.
Doral real estate agent Edward Redlich is representing the city in the transaction, and he said the Treo Group is under contract to buy the land for $6.8 million.
Representatives with the Treo Group have not returned multiple phone messages seeking comment on the purchase of the property or its plans for the land.
Wallace said clearing the lot of its residents and trailers was the final stipulation in the contract with the Treo Group. He maintains he had been telling residents for two years to start looking for other living arrangements.
While the letter the city sent last week was strongly worded and specific in its language that tenants faced legal consequences should they stay beyond Wednesday, Wallace now says the document was just a warning that they could not stay forever.
“The letter was to put them on notice,” he said.
The original story misidentified the name of the development company. The company is the Treo Group.
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 4:01 PM.
