Residents are losing their mobile homes, and Phoenix isn’t doing enough to help
Opinion: Developers are buying up mobile home parks to redevelop, and residents are being displaced without enough cash to relocate. Phoenix must step in.Corrections & clarifications: Phoenix Deputy City Manager Alan Stephenson was misidentified in an earlier version of this column.
Families displaced from mobile home parks want the Phoenix City Council to listen to their predicament and at least try do something about it.
But so far, city officials have taken the easy way out, saying they can’t and won’t interfere with private transactions.
That’s not acceptable. The least Mayor Kate Gallego and council members could do is hear residents on a formal agenda.
Since the start of 2021, “at least 30 trailer, manufactured and mobile home parks have sold for almost $260 million” in the greater Phoenix area, according to reporting by The Arizona Republic. Many of those parks are being redeveloped, and while it’s difficult to know how many families have been impacted, potentially thousands of residents with a stable home are being thrown out due to no fault of their own.
