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RIVERDALE — Jason Williams has lived at Lesley's Mobile Home Park in Riverdale for about 22 years. On May 31, however, the park will no longer exist.
City officials rezoned the park for development last summer, Williams said, and residents were given a nine-month notice to move out. Park management offered some financial assistance — $3,000 for those who moved out by the end of January — but Williams said that amount doesn't nearly cover the cost of moving a trailer to a new park. His own costs have been around $11,000 to move his trailer just 12 miles, he said.
Williams said 50-plus families will have nowhere to go come the end of May. He's trying to help his neighbors apply for subsidized housing through the state, "but it's a messed-up situation," he said.
The looming eviction date has possibly driven some residents to desperation — one woman allegedly paid her nephew to burn down her recently purchased trailer home. Williams believes it's because she hadn't been told before buying the home that the park had been rezoned.
He also believes management deliberately let the park fall into disrepair so that the city would rezone it, a process he calls "planned degradation."
"I've pretty much given up on everything," Williams said. "There's no hope for people like us."
Lesley's Mobile Home Park management didn't return a request for comment.
Bart Stevens said he doesn't believe that "planned degradation" had anything to do with the rezoning decision.
Stevens is a Riverdale city councilman but emphasized that, in this matter, he's speaking for himself. Lesley's Mobile Home Park falls within his Latter-day Saint ward boundaries and Stevens said he got to know the residents after his bishop asked him to help the people living there access social services.
He said many of the residents have been aware since at least 2017 that redevelopment of the lot was possible, since that's when the Ken Garff company bought the property and vacated some of the trailers. However, some of the more recent move-ins weren't informed of the pending rezoning, he said.
The park was later sold to H&H-39th Street LLC, Stevens continued. A March 2021 Riverdale City Council meeting agenda shows that H&H-39th Street requested the rezoning of Lesley's Mobile Home Park.
Stevens also said the age of some of the trailers is making them difficult to move. Trailer homes were standardized in the 1970s, he said, and because of that, many parks won't accept trailer homes built before then. The National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1974 authorizes the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to establish standards that assure the "quality, durability, safety and affordability" of manufactured homes, according to the department's website.
Stevens said many, if not most, of the trailers at Lesley's Mobile Home Park are from 1976 and earlier, so it's hard to find other parks willing to take them. Some of the trailers have unsafe wiring or are otherwise not up to code, he added.
He said for residents looking to sell, buyers are "few and far between" and often lowball the owners. Other residents owe on their trailers and don't know how to get rid of them, he said.
Several organizations in northern Utah are trying to provide help. Andi Beadles, executive director of the Weber Housing Authority, said her organization joined forces with the Ogden Civil Action Network and the United Way of Northern Utah to draft legislation that would provide greater protections for mobile home owners. They were ultimately too late to have their legislation considered in last year's session and, this year, their potential sponsor Steve Waldrip is no longer a member of the Utah House of Representatives. Beadles set they haven't yet found another potential sponsor.
Beadles said trailer parks are what her organization refers to as "naturally occurring affordable housing" and, without them, "it just puts more strain on our already strained affordable housing resources in the county." Some of the residents at Lesley's Mobile Home Park might be put on waiting lists for affordable housing up to a year long, she added.
Jenny Gnagey, who has worked as a housing advocate for the Ogden Civil Action Network, and conducted focus groups with the United Way of Northern Utah, said she's "frequently" seen mobile home residents pushed out of their parks when developers buy the property. Davis County has been hit particularly hard, she said, with three major park closures happening over the last several years.
"The demand and need and those who are eligible for (subsidized housing) is greater than the inventory that we have ... and the amount of funding that the government is willing to provide," Gnagey said. "I think that is the other consequence of this disappearing affordable housing ... over time, whether quickly or slowly, it does result in an increase in homelessness."
