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They're being evicted

At Linger Longer Mobile Home and RV Park near Tarpon Springs, residents' worst fears have come true.

By ROBIN STEIN
Published January 18, 2006

	[Times photo: Kathleen Flynn]
	Keith Dooley, 70, and Mimi Musil, 73, hug after residents of Largo's Ranchero Village Mobile Home Park closed on its purchase Tuesday.

TARPON SPRINGS - A year ago, Bob and Betsy Hill paid $20,000 for a 1975 double-wide mobile home in the Linger Longer Mobile Home and RV Park.

A few days later, they learned the park's owner had decided to sell and would soon send out a formal six months' notice of eviction.

That eviction notice arrived Dec. 2.

"Had we known, we wouldn't have bought it," said Bob Hill, 78, a retired supervisor with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. "We were very angry."

Most residents in the mobile home section of the park own the dwellings but pay $307 a month to Linger Longer Mobile HP LLC to rent the land underneath.

Residents say the tight-knit community is an idyllic slice of "Old Florida," where golf carts ramble up and down the miniature lanes and people gather on docks and porches adorned with welcome signs, wreaths and wind chimes. The men make breakfast every Saturday morning in the recreation center, a lodge from the days when the property was still a fishing camp. Today it is where they gather for bingo, fish fries, Valentine's Day dances and fashion shows.

Now residents must make plans to move, though many mobile homes, including the Hills', are too old to be moved and have to be abandoned.

"We can't get a permit to move down the highway," said Ben Darnell, a retired plant maintenance supervisor from Kalamazoo, Mich., who has come to the park for six months every year since 1994 with his wife, Phyllis, 73.

They had planned to live in Florida year-round for health reasons, so they installed new living room carpet and kitchen flooring in December 2004. They learned the park might be sold the day they got the bill for the carpet, Darnell said.

The owner, a California company headed by William Walters, tried to let residents know early on that the park might change hands, said Bill R. Capps, the owner's Florida representative.

That's why the owner sent out letters nearly a year ago in a "goodwill" effort to notify residents as soon as possible, Capps said.

Unlike the eviction notice, the letter early last year was not required by law. Florida law requires mobile home park owners to give residents a chance to match a developer's purchase offer when the park owner puts it up for sale.

But in the case of Linger Longer, "this park was not for sale," Capps said. "It was an unsolicited offer."

Capps said the property is under contract but declined to disclose details and said the park will close whether the sale goes through. The owner loves the park, which it has owned since 1981, but it realized the venture had become financially untenable between rising insurance rates and expensive water disputes with the state, Capps said.

Darnell, president of the homeowners association, said that at first residents initially hoped to buy the park even though the owner didn't have to sell to them. But the $8-million they had arranged to raise did not come close to matching a $14.7-million bid from the Boos Development Group in Clearwater, he said.

In October, representatives of the Boos Development Group submitted preliminary site plans to the Tarpon Springs City Commission as part of a rezoning and annexation application. The plans called for the construction of 248 condominiums and townhouses on the site.

The City Commission rejected the rezoning change, which ultimately scuttled a bid to annex part of Linger Longer into the city.

But that did not change the fact that residents still need to be out of the park by June 7.

While the eviction appears inevitable, residents said they still hope to negotiate a better deal than the arrangement they learned about Friday.

Nearly 100 residents gathered in the park's recreation center to hear a presentation by the professional relocation service hired by the Boos Development Group, Darnell said.

Resident Relocation Services of Clearwater provided coffee and doughnuts, but as the group listened, the mood went from anger to disgust, he said.

The company has offered to pay $3,000 to $4,375 to owners who vacate by April 30, according to a handout from the company. Those who wait until June 6 will have to file for reimbursement through the state's programs, which pay $1,375 to $2,750.

None of the residents expect to get what they paid for their homes, said Darnell and the other board members of the association.

But they said they think it is unfair to pay less than $7,500 to people on fixed incomes who are being forced to find a new place to live.

Outside her home Tuesday morning, Betsy Hill, 72, packed boxes into her maroon Buick parked in the driveway. The Hills have started to move things up to Holiday, where they recently purchased a 1975 mobile home for $69,000.

This time, they are buying the land underneath.

Robin Stein can be reached at 445-4157 or rstein@sptimes.com

LOCATION: Just north of Tarpon Springs and south of the Pasco County line on Anclote Road. The property overlooks the Anclote River.

HOW BIG: About 100 mobile home lots and 150 RV sites; 19.9 acres.

WHEN BUILT: Early 1970s.

ITS FUTURE: Is uncertain. Eviction notices delivered last month give residents until June to move out.

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING: "Had we known, we wouldn't have bought it," Bob Hill said. "We were very angry."

[Last modified January 18, 2006, 01:10:21]