There’s never a good time for an eviction, but Wayne and Rosie Sharp say this one couldn’t be worse.

They paid all their property taxes in one shot. They spent too much on Christmas. They just put $2,000 into remodeling the bathroom.

“We can’t afford a move,” said Wayne, 42.

The Sharps and their 35 to 50 neighbors at the Ponderosa Mobile Home Park, on Appleway near Ramsey, were told this week they must pull up stakes and leave the park by June.

That’s when state health officials say the park’s 15 trailers must be weaned from aquifer-threatening septic tanks and hooked to the city’s sewer system.

The Lenmark Corporation, the landowner, says the $100,000-plus cost is too expensive. The Panhandle Health District is forcing company president David Lentes to evict his tenants, a company spokesman says.

“He isn’t doing this simply because he would make more money as a potato farmer,” said Lenmark spokesman Jack Carothers.

Panhandle Health officials say they aren’t forcing any eviction. When sewer is available and septic systems are faulty, they simply must be hooked to sewer systems.

“I guess he (Lentes) is just using us as a scapegoat, I don’t know,” said environmental health specialist Dave Hylsky.

Residents don’t blame the Health District for doing its job. They don’t blame Lentes for trying to make money.

They are unnerved just the same.

Moving on will be hard enough for M. Phillips, a retiree who has lived in the park since the Johnson administration. It will be equally difficult for Ed and Angila Gennert, a young couple expecting their first child.

The real problem? There’s no place to go.

The Sharps should know. Wayne said he has called every park “from Spirit Lake south to State Line” looking for a place to put his 1981 home.

“Nobody will take a trailer that’s more than five years old,” he said. The Sharps have the newest home on the lot.

“Most parks don’t want old trailers,” said George Barnhart at A-1 Mobile Home Towing and Sales. “They don’t look as good and they (park owners) can get better insurance without them.

“These people will probably have to buy a piece of land or go out of Kootenai County,” he said.

Phillips, a Social Security recipient, said she can’t afford land. She doesn’t even know how she’ll pay the $1,500 to $3,000 to move.

“I don’t know where I’m going to go,” she said.

Residents say they need more time, but Hylsky says an extension isn’t likely. Residents also have offered to share the sewer hook-up costs, but they probably can’t pay enough to make it worth Lentes’ time.

They have four months to find an answer, Wayne Sharp says. Because in four months, “I will be homeless in my own home.”