Phoenix City Council votes to approve emergency funding for mobile home residents

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) -- In a 5-4 vote, the Phoenix City Council voted to provide some help to hundreds of mobile home residents facing eviction. The city approved $2.5 million of emergency funding to help residents of Periwinkle, Las Casitas, and Weldon Court mobile home parks who are being displaced as landowners seek to use the property for other reasons.

But this was a substitute motion, meaning the council didn’t vote on some of the other original recommendations, including a zoning change for mobile home parks and an 18-month moratorium on all development at these three parks.

“I’ve never depended on no government,” Weldon Court resident Carmen Prieto said following the city council vote. “Never have, and I never will. I have to struggle out and now my kid will to. Imagine all the people. This is going to continue on and on and on. We’re not the first failures nor the last ones.”

“You know they say that the evictions will still continue, but we just wanted them to have empathy for the people,” Arizona Poor People Campaign’s Veronica Monge added. “The people needed them to vote yes on that.”

In a statement, Vice Mayor Yassamin Ansari, one of the four who voted no, said, “It’s incredibly frustrating and disheartening that my colleagues continue to share their concerns about homelessness in the Valley, and in my district in particular, yet they’ve chosen to ignore the pleas of these families facing eviction.”

Grand Canyon University (GCU), which purchased the land Periwinkle mobile harm park sits on seven years ago, said in a statement, “GCU supports the Phoenix City Council’s decision to provide further relocation funding support in addition to the funding that the university is already providing to those who reside at Periwinkle Mobile Home Park. GCU purchased Periwinkle seven years ago for future campus expansion and waited as long as it could expand into that location.”

Residents at these three mobile home parks have to find a new place to live everywhere from a little over a month to two months.

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