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Landlord squeezes the already squeezed
© St. Petersburg Times How disturbing it is to hear an 81-year-old woman with arthritis and varicose veins in her legs say she needs a job. Fay Smith wants one, perhaps like the job she had last summer at an assisted living facility in New Port Richey. For $7.50 an hour, she called bingo and worked in the office. Now they want her back only during the holidays. She can't get by on that, or on the $10 a week she's paid now and then by a neighbor in her mobile home park who hired Mrs. Smith to drive her to the grocery, the doctor, the beauty salon. Fay Smith is quick to say she isn't complaining But she is in a crisis. She isn't alone. At her mobile home park, Hacienda Village, people talk frankly of being squeezed and scared. The park owners want to tack on $15 a month to lot rents to cover increased property taxes they have to pay on the land. They also intend to charge each homeowner a one-time fee of $600 to pay for repairs to the park's water and sewage system. That works out to be $16 a month for three years. The increase in rent and the water and sewer repair bill total $31 a month. It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but in the accounting of old age, this is a brutal amount. The residents are circulating petitions around the park. They're contacting state regulators who oversee mobile homes. They're threatening a lawsuit. Mrs. Smith, widowed last year, lives on $980 a month in Social Security. Out of her government check she has to pay the lot rent, which will be $348 in January, plus a car payment, car insurance, health insurance and a pre-paid funeral policy. That swallows another $366. She sets aside $150 a month for other regular bills such as utilities. This leaves her with a little more than $100 a month for groceries and any unexpected expense, unless she dips into a small savings account that contains $600. "I put everything on the bills," she said. "I don't buy clothing. I don't buy anything. I can't go anywhere." She has devised a plan on the assumption the homeowners will lose their fight with the park's owners. "What I'm going to have to do is to try to sell my mobile home," she said in one breath and in the next wondered if anybody would move in while Hacienda Village is mired in this conflict. The mobile home park is being sold by one absentee landlord to another, from a company in Maryland to one in Illinois. The management company that oversees the park wouldn't answer questions. A man in the firm said I might misinterpret their position. But there is no mistaking the residents' position. They don't own the land their homes sit on. The park owner does. That's why the residents say the owners should pay the tax hikes, not them. They take the same view about the water and sewer system. To them, it's the owners' responsibility. Fay Smith has mulled over other plans for her future. If she sold her mobile home, she could go back to her Pennsylvania hometown. She has sisters and brothers there, but they're elderly, too. "They send me a little bit now and then. I wouldn't ask. I don't do that." Fay Smith once took care of herself just fine, she told me. She didn't have to fret about some landlord. Then she said something -- just a handful of words -- that was as moving as it was astonishing. "Today my sister sent me something. It made me feel so good," she said. "I was out of stamps, and she sent me a book of stamps." -- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3402.
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Times columns today Mary Jo Melone From the Times Metro desk |
