More than 100 people signed up to speak during Wednesday’s Phoenix City Council meeting. Most of the speakers were from the Periwinkle, Weldon Court and Las Casitas mobile home parks. All were fighting to avoid being evicted from their homes.
The three parks have been targeted for neighborhood redevelopment. One of them is owned by Grand Canyon University.
Residents have received notices to prepare to get out, leading to a fight over several months which came to a head Wednesday.
Phoenix City Councilors were expected to vote on a series of four actions that residents hoped would keep them from being displaced. But, in the end, the only motion to pass included providing $2.5 million to support the relocation while also offering services the city already provides to help the homeless community. The passing of that option meant, in the end, the families will have to leave.
Residents of the three mobile home parks are now forced to find other places to go with move-out dates coming in the weeks ahead. Property owners have long pointed out they’ve been alerting residents for years this day would soon come.
GCU sent a statement regarding the council's decision:
"GCU supports the Phoenix City Council’s decision to provide further relocation funding support in addition to the funding that the university is already providing to those who reside at Periwinkle Mobile Home Park. GCU purchased Periwinkle seven years ago for future campus expansion and waited as long as it could to expand into that location.
As a reminder, the assistance that GCU is providing includes:
- Over half a million dollars in benefits to tenants, including free rent, early departure compensation, relocation financial assistance and household goods from GCU’s CityServe warehouse
- Extending the deadline notification for when the park closes to 13 months (May 28). Six months is legally required.
- Hiring a third-party housing expert, Trellis, to assist families and address their individual needs. Trellis has been able to identify additional public and private funding that tenants have received.
- Mobile home renovation funding to those moving existing mobile homes or moving into new mobile homes"
Phoenix Vice Mayor Yassamin Ansari also sent a statement in response to the decision:
"At its most basic level, homelessness is about housing – and today, City Council failed to keep hundreds of families in their homes.
The families of Las Casitas, Weldon Court, and Periwinkle mobile home parks have spent thousands of hours at City Council meetings, sharing how the stress of their upcoming evictions is negatively impacting their lives.
It’s incredibly frustrating and disheartening that my colleagues continue to share their concerns about homelessness in the Valley, and in my district in particular, yet they’ve chosen to ignore the pleas of these families facing eviction.
I’d be more than willing to work with Grand Canyon University, Trellis, the property owners of Weldon Court and Las Casitas, and the residents to get people housed. But the reality is these families are already home.
Even more concerning is that this issue is not confined to just the Periwinkle, Las Casitas, and Weldon Court mobile home residents. There are 425 mobile home parks in the city. As more people move to our city, we have to find ways to accommodate new development without displacing residents."
