Tenants facing uncertainty

Marian Tounsel hoped that she could retire at the El Rancho Mobile Home Park.

Three years ago, she decorated the outside with smiling wooden orange flowers and moved in with her family and small dog.

“It’s an old trailer to some people, but to me it’s my home,” Tounsel said.

It may not be by the end of the year. Last fall Tounsel and the park’s other residents were informed by the park’s new owner that they would have to move, and Tounsel is uncertain she can afford to take her trailer with her.

Vandervert Developments plans to convert the property on the corner of Highway 41 and Mullan Avenue into a shopping center.

“I was stunned. You buy a place and I had hoped this would be the last place I’d live,” said the 67-year-old Tounsel. “I was hoping to retire when I’m 70. At this rate it will probably be 80.”

Tounsel is just one of dozens of El Rancho trailer home owners that Jana Hardin has surveyed for the Christian Community Coalition.

Hardin found that many of the residents are retired or disabled. Others are single parents. “The residents are in a tight spot,” she said.

The Christian Community Coalition, a group of churches joined together for social justice, is trying to help, but is finding the enormity of the problem overwhelming.

“The committee is more of a choke point for resources and information, but we’re not really able to financially help with the situation,” said Northwoods Fellowship Pastor Curt Wegley.

The El Rancho Mobile Home Park’s roughly 70 trailers sit on prime commercial property. Nearby developments include strip malls featuring Starbucks, Wendy’s, Noodle Express and Wal-Mart.

Eviction notices have not been sent out to the tenants, and there is no specific timeline for redevelopment of the property, said Dave Dixon who is managing the project for Vandervert Developments.

Dixon said he is sympathetic to the plight of the people who live in the park and is glad that the Christian Community Coalition is working to help them relocate.

There aren’t any easy answers for the park’s residents. A few have already moved out, some leaving behind gutted shells of their trailers.

Still, most of the tenants remain.

They live at El Rancho simply because they can’t afford to live anywhere else. The rent is $260 per month – less than a market-rate studio apartment.

Iraq War veteran Chris Bove lives at El Rancho with his wife and daughter. Suffering from post traumatic stress disorder after returning to the United States from Baghdad, Bove said he spiraled downhill in Florida and ended up living out of his car.

Now the 25-year-old former soldier is trying to put his life back together. El Rancho’s sale put a serious glitch in his plans.

“We just take things one day at a time around here,” Bove said, adding that hurtful comments about the park’s residents haven’t made things easier.

Instead of sympathizing with the trailer park’s residents when the news broke last fall, some people just said good riddance to trailer trash, he said. “I just want to scream out and find these people and say, ‘You don’t know us. One day you may be in this position, too.’ “

“Those folks are having a really hard time,” said Brenda Evans of El Rancho’s residents.

Evans manages The Rental Connection which matches landlords and tenants.

More and more trailer parks are going the way of the El Rancho, and vacancies are few and far between. Right now The Rental Connection has just four mobile home space listings.

Tounsel was told it would cost her $3,600 to move her trailer and have it set up at another mobile home park.

“It’s more than my trailer house cost me, almost,” she said. “Where am I supposed to get the money from?”

Many of the trailers can’t be relocated even if their owners could afford it. Idaho law prohibits mobile homes built before 1976 from being moved.

That’s the case with Bove’s trailer, which he has yet to pay off.

“I’m looking at continuing to pay for a place that’s going to be turned into a pile of rubble,” Bove said.

“Some of the people who have older homes, they don’t have any choice. They can’t move it so they abandon it and try to move on,” Evans said.

Moving into an apartment or house may not be any easier.

In addition to the higher per month rental cost, there’s also the issue of first and last month’s rent and damage deposits, which can push the cost of moving well over $1,000. Many of El Rancho’s residents have bad credit ratings which can also keep them out of rental units.

That’s what has been keeping Cat Foster and her boyfriend and 2-year-old son from moving out of their El Rancho mobile home. The trailer is too old to move and Foster can’t find an apartment.

“I’m worried about where I’m going to be going,” Foster said. “I look every day in the papers. Everyone wants a perfect credit score and doesn’t care that we don’t make a lot.”

She said the uncertainty is taking a toll on her small family, especially son Chase Larson. “He has no clue why everybody is all stressed out.”

Foster hasn’t applied for any kind of housing assistance.

“I feel the people that need it most are those who don’t already have a home,” she said.

Housing assistance waiting lists are long.

Coeur d’Alene’s St. Vincent de Paul has 45 units of transitional housing and another 150 affordable permanent housing units, said the nonprofit’s transitional housing manager, Matt Hutchinson.

“Our waiting lists are absolutely ridiculous right now,” Hutchinson said.

Those lists are 1 to 1 1/2 years long, and Hutchinson said El Rancho residents should get on those lists as soon as possible.

“If they wait until the last minute they will be homeless,” he said. “Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County don’t have places for 100 families.”

Post Falls City Administrator Eric Keck said he’s tried to match some El Rancho families with groups that can help them, but that the situation is a challenge.

“Even if it was in the city, there’s very little we could do in terms of resources,” he said.

The property must be annexed and hooked into Post Falls’ sewer system before it can be redeveloped.

Keck said the city’s attorneys are examining whether annexation conditions can be placed on the developer to benefit the tenants. Still, that’s a long-shot. Keck said he doesn’t know if such conditions are possible or even what they might be.

Pastor Wegley said that the Christian Community Coalition is now trying to raise awareness of the situation and rally private individuals and government to help.

“We’re all in favor of economic development in our community,” Wegley said, “but not when it makes people homeless.”