The park’s management is offering relocation assistance and has put together afinancial incentive package of $14,000 to homeowners who vacate the park within the next couple of months. But given the shortage of available affordable housing units in Miami-Dade, residents of Li’l Abner are right in saying that this sum of money is not enough.
Rental prices in Miami-Dade county have increased by a staggering 58 percent over the past five years and, according to Rent.com, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is now $3,418 per month. This is simply out of reach for the residents at Li’l Abner and other working-class tenants in South Florida.
The money offered by management would barely cover four months of rent, and it represents only a fraction of the market value of the mobile homes that residents worked so hard to build and maintain.
“I purchased [my mobile home] here a month and a half ago,” an unidentified resident said to Channel 7 News Miami. “It cost me $145,000. Why didn’t they tell me right then and there [to not buy]?”
Mobile homes are one of the most reliable and important sources of affordable housing. It is illogical for Urban and CREI to say they are abruptly tearing down the park in the name of affordability, and unconscionable to wipe away the investments hundreds have made in this wealth-holding asset.
Members of the Li’l Abner mobile home park community are working to determine their next moves. Some want more time and more money while others are open toseeking legal action to prevent the eviction.
Other potential solutions include putting political pressure on Mayor Jose Díaz and Sweetwater’s City Council to side with their constituents, rather than developers, by issuing an eviction moratorium and providing residents with pro bono legal representation. Residents could organize a rent strike and force the owners to explore a negotiated alternative solution. Or the residents could come together to buy the property and convert the park into a mobile home cooperative.
Alberto, an 80-year-old resident of the Li’l Abner that has spent the last twenty years in the park, joined the protest Monday to urge Urban and CREI to reconsider their eviction plans.
“This mobile home is mine, but now I must leave it,” he said, saddened by the uncertainty that awaits him. “Why don’t they just sell us the land?”
