End of an era: Last residents scramble to vacate closed mobile home park in NLV

Monday, July 1, 2002 | 9 a.m.

Roberto Garcia was one of the lucky ones Friday morning at Sun City Mobile Home Park. Days before a Sunday deadline for closing the park, he was among the few moving to another location with his mobile home in tow.

The rest -- about 200 mostly Hispanic residents -- were planning to leave their mobile homes behind or drop them off somewhere while they came up with a better plan.

"It all worked out at the last minute," Garcia said Friday at the park, where everyone seemed to be figuring things out with one eye on the clock.

Such was the winding down of a case that observers said was unusual in the history of mobile home parks statewide. After nine months of meetings between the park's residents and public and private agencies -- with and without Spanish-speaking interpreters -- three court dates and lots of confusion, dozens of individuals and families were preparing to leave the park.

This morning, after the deadline passed, there appeared to be more sparrows than people in the park, as the birds combed freshly cut trees surrounding stripped mobile homes.

Alan Burkow, one of the few non-Hispanic residents and a 25-year resident of the park, was trying to find a tire for a neighbor. A truck had already taken his 1952 Travelite to a long-term parking space, after which he would move into an apartment for the first time in decades.

Armando Torres was leaving behind the mobile home he had lived in for only a few months, after a family of four he was friendly with had abandoned the trailer for Mexico. Torres, who works in construction, was moving in with an uncle while he searched for an apartment.

On Friday, a four-man demolition crew headed by Luis Chavez stripped a trailer on the north end of the park that had been left behind days earlier, hoping to reap about $30 worth of aluminum and copper for a few hours of sweat. The crew likely would descend on the trailer Torres was abandoning as soon as he exited and continue with the rest of the park's offering.

The case began in October 2001, when park owner McDonald Wood LLC sent the residents of 141 mobile homes a six-month notice of its intention to close the park and offered to pay for relocating the homes. Both are required by law.

But many residents ran into a problem not contemplated by the law, because their mobile homes were old and unable to pass state inspections required to move to a new site. The park's mostly working-class, undocumented immigrant residents sought assistance, only to be informed that their alternatives were few.

Still, due to what one official called a communication gap based not only on language but a lack of trust, the residents of at least 60 homes hung on.

McDonald Wood LLC had offered $1,000 to anyone who left their homes behind, but few took the offer. The owner then took residents to court, reaching an agreement that included waiving the last three months of rent and an eviction date of June 30 -- three months beyond the original date.

On Friday, three days before the deadline, Garcia considered himself among the fortunate. For months the Silverado Mobile Home Park, also in North Las Vegas, had said there were no spaces available. Days earlier an opening occurred.

Garcia's brother-in-law helped fix the electricity in his mobile home -- one of three systems, along with heating/cooling and plumbing, that the state inspects.

The move -- together with further repairs at the new site -- would cost him about $800. The rent at Silverado would be comparable to the $350 a month he paid at Sun City. For Garcia, who supports his family of four on about $2,000 a month working with cement, the move was manageable.

Manuel Sesma didn't have the same luck. Sunday he was moving his family of four into a North Las Vegas apartment, leaving behind his 1955 mobile home. For several months he had tried to generate interest among a group of families in buying land in Pahrump, then in Arizona. But the details were never worked out.

"Now we're just trying to get everything out of here, packing up what tools we can, figuring out what to leave behind," said Sesma, a mechanic.

Park manager Warren Flesher, who lived in Sun City from 1995 until January, said he felt for the park's residents, many of whom he said he has known for 10 years or more.

"The thing is," he said, "you can't stop progress. This property has been in use as a mobile home park since 1945, and it's the threshold into North Las Vegas. Why not put it to a more positive use?" The owner has said he plans to sell the land when the park is evacuated.

Sesma had a more bitter take on the turn of events at Sun City.

"The poor will always be poor and the system doesn't help them, especially if they don't have papers," he said. "I hate the system."