Trump cut money to relocate folks from this mobile home park. Then it flooded

Seven months after the Trump administration cut Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) money meant to relocate about 50 mobile-home park residents from a flood-prone valley near Tacoma, residents had the worst flood in 17 years.

As previously reported by The News Tribune, Pierce County was awarded a $10 million FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant in 2022. The grant was supposed to help the county acquire and demolish the Valleybrook Village Mobile Home Park off River Road East. The plan was to help residents of 45 mobile homes relocate elsewhere and turn the land into a natural floodplain to reduce flooding and “create a critical intertidal refuge habitat for salmon.”

Now, without that money, Pierce County’s plans for the site are up in the air.

Communications specialist Amanda Smith told The News Tribune last month that the Valleybrook Village Mobile Home Park experienced flooding in the severe atmospheric river event that hit the Puget Sound region in mid-December. Floodwaters rose to 17 feet above sea level at the park, and, “We are in the midst of collecting damage reports throughout Pierce County,” she said.

“Currently, the County has not received any additional BRIC funding or related notifications for Valleybrook, and we do not yet know when we will be able to restart discussions to secure a contract for the funding,” Smith said in an email Dec. 29.

In April, when the FEMA funding was canceled, mobile-home park residents celebrated the decision, claiming that flood events were infrequent in recent years. All the residents are retirement age and low-income, and many told The News Tribune the money the county would have offered them to relocate was not enough to afford to live elsewhere.

Upon a visit to the park Wednesday, three residents told The News Tribune that December’s flooding was the worst they’d seen since 2008.

Water from the nearby Clear Creek rose nearly to the doors of some cars. At least one resident had to move their trailer to avoid the floodwater, and all residents were urged to prepare to evacuate “due to continuing rain and the level of the Puyallup River,” according to a letter homeowners received from their nonprofit housing corporation on Dec. 14.

The letter, which was shared with The News Tribune, also said the park’s septic systems were damaged by water saturation. Residents were warned that continued use of their toilets, sinks, showers or washing machines “can cause the back-up of sewage into your home.” In bold and italics was a reminder that, “The park’s insurance does not provide any coverage for the flooding of your home.”

One resident, who declined to share her name for privacy reasons, said for two weeks she had to monitor her water usage by taking quick showers, not doing laundry and dumping used dishwater outside. The smell of sewage only just went away, she said.

The woman, who has lived there 10 years, said residents have resigned themselves to living like this because they don’t want to move and there’s no easy solution.

“I wasn’t expecting it. [The scale of flooding] really shocked me,” said another neighbor, who also declined to share his name for privacy reasons. “The creek does get high, and it sometimes comes up to the gate part on the very end of my property, but I don’t worry about that because the tide comes in and it goes out. We had a lot of king tides in the bay — which were extremely high — fighting the water coming down in the rain. Just nowhere to go.”

The man said in the past several houses at the end of the property were removed due to flooding, but “if the floods throughout the years were that bad and so severe, I don’t think this trailer would still be here, if you think about it.”

Residents look out for each other, and the man said he called a neighbor to let her know when the tide was low enough that she could drive back to her property.

For now, the man said he doesn’t expect Pierce County to relocate them.

“If you do the math … [the county is] going to have to give a pretty good dollar for everybody’s trailers,” the man said, noting that it’s impossible to find a comparable home for less than $100,000 in Pierce County.