In a little more than two weeks, 86-year-old Ruth Johnson will be forced to say goodbye to the small trailer she’s called home for the last 25 years.
She never planned to leave this decaying but cherished mobile home in Lookout Valley off Cummings Highway. But in mid-August, the owner of the mobile home park told her that she and the other tenants had to clear the property by Nov. 1.
“We are being forced to move out,” Johnson said. “I have lived out here so long, and it’s been my home. Everything else is strange. I wouldn’t even know how to drive out there.”
Dorothy Fann, who built and opened Fann Mobile Home Park with her husband more than 50 years ago, has every legal right to ask Johnson and other residents to leave the property. The law only requires landlords to provide a 30-day written notice.
Fann, now 79, said it’s hard to let the property go. Fann, who lives in a home within walking distance of the trailer park, said she isn’t selling it; she just wants the land cleared.
Too many people fell behind on their rent, and traffic got too heavy on the road through the park, she said. Parents let their small children play in the street, and she said she’s worried they might be hit by a speeding car.
“We have had a lot of people come through here,” she said. “It seems like people were more responsible than they are now.”
Still, the transition is heartrending for some residents who have never thought of leaving and are convinced they have nowhere to go.
Some residents at Fann Mobile Home Park said the cost of moving their trailers could prove financially devastating. In many cases, they can’t be sold or used at another trailer park because they are too old to be moved. Several trailers have been abandoned on the property.
“Last year, the owner told me I could stay out here as long as I want,” said 72-year-old Bobby Byrd. “I don’t have any say-so. It’s just like, ‘Get out, forget it. The trailer can’t be moved. Thank you. Goodbye.'”
Byrd, who struggles with speech problems and lives off a disability check each month, has lived in Fann Mobile Home Park for 12 years and always paid his rent on time.
He has some family living in Texas, so he guesses he’ll go there, but he’s not sure.
“I don’t have anything around here,” he said.
It seems like everyone in the situation loses, Fann said.
“I think some people are trying to paint me out as a mean ol’ landlady, but it comes time for things to end, and this is it,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking for me.”