While the nation prepares for holiday celebrations at home, hundreds of families in Virginia fear they may be losing their homes because local inspectors say they’re not safe. Sandy Hausman reports that the city of Richmond has begun inspecting trailer parks – ordering residents to make repairs or move out.
On a mild autumn evening, Evan and Laura welcome us to their home in the Mobile Town Trailer Park off the Old Midlothian Turnpike – a quiet neighborhood of about a hundred families – many of them from Mexico. In a corner of their tidy living room, their two young sons are hunched over a small table, playing a video game.
Laura’s dad, Emilio, is also here to talk with me about how the family came to be in a predicament. He came here 14 years ago.
“We’re just here to try and make a good life,” he told me. “To live a little better than we were in Mexico. There are no jobs there. We worked in the fields, but we didn’t own land – we didn’t have anything.”
Here in Richmond, he found work in construction. His daughter and son-in-law decided to join him and to raise their family here, in a 3-bedroom trailer Don Emilio had bought for $10,000.
That’s something many immigrants do, according to Phil Storey, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Justice Center.
“Rather than spend say $800 a month on rent for a crummy apartment in an unsafe place where we can’t trust our neighbors and we get bedbugs," he says, many immigrants think, 'We could save up a little bit of money, buy an old mobile home, fix it up a little, but at least our monthly rent would be closer to $300 to $400 a month.'"
Evan is a builder by trade. He installed insulation and made other improvements so his family could stay in a neighborhood they liked.
“We can live the way we did in Mexico, without bothering anyone," he explains. "In an apartment it’s hard to live. There’s someone above you – someone below you. You can’t have a barbeque outside or host a party without having problems with your neighbors.”
And his wife loves being close to her family. About 40 relatives live in neighboring trailers, and they help with childcare when she gets work cleaning houses.
But this tight-knit community and others could be torn apart as the city proceeds with inspection of as many as a 600 trailers around town. Emilio admits he’s nervous.
“We have been told by the city that we need a central heating unit, and they’ve come up with some other small details we have to fix," he says. "We live in fear, because we don’t know where we’re going to go if they decide to evict us.”
Officials insist on central heat, even though the state’s maintenance code doesn’t require it. The city refused to comment on the situation after the Legal Aid Justice Center asked a judge to stop the inspections – arguing they discriminate against Latinos. Phil Storey agrees that safety is essential but thinks evicting people is the wrong way to go.
“The population of the city of Richmond is something like 6% Latino," he says. "The population of the mobile home parks is about 70% Latino, and the Fair Housing Act would require the city to try to avoid really harming one minority community by its actions, if there’s a less discriminatory way to accomplish its legitimate ends.”
He hopes Richmond will collaborate with community groups in making the trailers safer without forcing families from their homes. A judge will decide Friday, December 4 whether to block further inspections and evictions until the case can be heard.