Evictions are final blow for park

Plans to seek damages are cold comfort for Ev-Mar Mobile Village residents after losing three-year battle

Thursday, Feb. 2, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Allison Pasek⁄The Gazette Amanda Fellers (left) consoles Ev-Mar resident Stacy Buckingham outside Frank Dove’s mobile home on Monday as the remaining residents were evicted. Many of the residents stripped the siding off their homes and sold it for money.

But Monday night, she sat surrounded by still-packed boxes in a two-bedroom Laurel apartment, explaining to her 3-year old son that this was their new home.

‘‘It’ll never be the same,” said Pressley, one of the remaining residents of Ev-Mar Mobile Village in North Laurel who were evicted Monday. ‘‘My home was old, but it was ours, we had our privacy... everybody tells me I should be happy that we found something, but I’m not.”

The evictions ended more than a three-year struggle on the residents’ part to stay in the mobile home park, while owners tried to shut it down to sell to a developer, but many residents promise to battle on in the courts.

Attorney Philip Robinson hopes to obtain damages for the residents, many of whom have lost their homes, as well as a court ruling on state and county mobile home statutes.

‘‘At this point... there’s no realistic way to save their homes,” Robinson said. ‘‘But [our firm] Civil Justice is very concerned of the long-range impact of this ruling on mobile home residents statewide. We’re prepared to do what’s necessary to make sure that the ruling is reconsidered at all levels.”

Howard County Circuit Court Judge Diane Leasure issued the evictions ruling on Jan. 9 and denied a motion to stay the order.

After the 1997 death of the park owners, estate representatives decided in February 2003 to try to rezone the park for townhouses to help sell the land. That effort failed in early 2004, but sale plans proceeded, despite residents’ efforts to purchase it themselves and form a co-operative. The park, which officially closed June 1, 2005, is being sold to Columbia-based Dale Thompson Builders.

Because it is privately owned property, Howard County officials say there was little they could do to help the residents stay there.

‘‘We feel we should try to make it as easy for our citizens as we can, but there are limitations,” said Leonard Vaughan, director of the Howard County Housing Commission. ‘‘We offered them a full array of assistance, [and] they essentially turned us down.”

Vaughan cited the county’s purchase of lots to help relocate residents, as well as offers of housing vouchers, relocation grants and up to $2,500 to cover moving expenses.

But residents say the county’s efforts were half-hearted at best, and useless in the end.

Kalvin Evans, a father of five who now has moved into a temporary home in Cecil County, said the county stalled on its help by requiring proof of money spent before offering reimbursement. Ultimately, he said, the residents would not be in this situation if the county’s help had been of any substance.

‘‘What the county’s done, what the developers have done, what the estate has done, is nothing short of underhanded, greedy and selfish,” he said. ‘‘Because we expressed the treatment of what was being done to us as unfair... we’re being punished.”

Pressley said she tried to take advantage of the $2,500 offer, but was told first to provide receipts of money spent, then to provide the originals of those receipts.

Ann McAndrews wept Tuesday in her Laurel apartment as she recalled the new trailer she purchased before moving into Ev-Mar in 2003, at the same time estate owners tried to rezone the park.

With most of a 30-year mortgage left to pay, she is anticipating filing for bankruptcy now that she has a $1,095 monthly rent, compared to the $425 she was paying to rent land on the park. ‘‘That was a beautiful home,” she said. ‘‘It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever owned in my life, and I probably won’t be able to own anything like that ever again.”

With the former tight-knit community scattered, Vince Patrick has settled in Alaska where he lived in the ’90s.

None of the residents could afford to stay in the county because of its lack of affordable housing, and that is an aspects of this ordeal that illustrates failures larger than the legal one, Patrick said.

The other aspects include the residents’ failed attempt to form a co-op ‘‘as a grassroots approach to community development rather than... developer-designed neighborhoods,” and the courts’ failure to provide adequate review of vague mobile home statutes.

For these reasons, Patrick said, it is vital for the appeals to go forward and produce some sort of review, so that the residents’ efforts were not in vain.

But he himself will not come back.

‘‘I have nothing left in Maryland... I put everything I had into it,” he said, adding that he would always wonder if he could have done more. ‘‘It’ll haunt me ‘till I die.”

E-mail Ayesha Ahmad at aahmad@gazette.net.