BRADENTON -- Legal and community advocates asked County Commissioner
Pat Glass on Friday to ensure that residents of a troubled trailer park can stay
through the holidays and not be forced to move out.
Glass listened to their concerns, but said she couldn't promise anything. She did
say she planned to meet with Sheriff Charlie Wells and other county officials next
week to see how the county can help the residents.
But many services are open only to people who have permits to be in the country.
That means many families won't get help.
"We're going to make every effort we can to relocate people if they want it,
" Glass told advocates Friday. "But we can't force them."
She said that residents who live in trailers that have been condemned will have
until the end of January to leave the park.
Luz Corcuera, a coordinator with Healthy Start Coalition of Manatee County,
said she wants to make sure families are treated fairly.
"The only problem is the way this is being done," Corcuera told Glass. "Healthy Start
has clients (who live at Trail), moms with babies, and that's our main concern."
Advocates and volunteers have spent the week meeting with Trail residents,
many of whom have said they've been threatened with deportation if they don't leave the park.
Volunteers said they wanted to educate residents about their rights in the eviction process.
State law says renters can't be evicted without written notice, and landlords can't cut
off utilities to evict residents.
But many residents have said the future owners have repeatedly pressured them to leave
the park amid threats of deportation and losing their children to welfare officials.
But the prospective owners vehemently deny such claims, saying they're only trying
to help the residents find a new place to go.
Laraine Chulla, who represents the prospective owners of the Trail Motel and Mobile Home Park,
said she has made daily trips to the park to meet with residents in order to relocate them.
"We're not the bad guys here," Chulla said Friday evening as she waited for a Manatee County
sheriff's deputy to arrive at the Trail.
Chulla said she hired deputies to patrol the park on the weekends so residents feel safer.
At recent meetings, residents have said that crime, such as drug dealing, robberies and prostitution,
have worsened in the park.
The county has cited it with numerous health and structural code violations throughout its history,
and has come close to shutting it down.
But county officials have said they wanted to give owner James Maglione of Sarasota more time
to fix problems so the Trail residents wouldn't be left on the streets.
The prospective buyers hope to build affordable housing on the site.
Chulla said residents were never ordered to be out of the park before Christmas, but she said
she had encouraged them to leave sooner than expected because of worsening plumbing
and sanitation problems.
Although Chulla's group hasn't closed on the park, she said they've been doing extra things,
like paying the $7,000 water bill, because "we're humanitarians. We want this property and
we want to fix it."