Letter: Mobile home owners deserve a solution

Saturday, Oct. 15, 2005 | 10:01 a.m.

According to recent news reports, the huge increase in local real estate prices has prompted the closure of many mobile home parks in the Las Vegas Valley. The land has allegedly become too valuable to be used in such a wasteful fashion.

Although hampered by limited incomes, most of the retirees, single parents and disabled citizens being displaced hold clear title to their trailers. With no place to re-park them, however, a high percentage of these outmoded dwellings will undoubtedly be demolished where they stand. The owners, presumably, will be free to go.

Unlike hurricane victims who are eligible for governmental aid, these economic sufferers are caught in the path of an even more devastating force -- human greed. And since this activity is approved by most governmental agencies, there is little recourse available to the damaged parties.

Why must this be so? Could not local legislators provide a limited moratorium on such transactions? Nothing to anger the money-men of course; a simple ruling to delay eviction and/or destruction until the affected residents could be satisfactorily relocated would probably be enough.

Maybe we should just call FEMA. It might have a few leftover hurricane dollars that could provide shelter for people whose homes were destroyed by the cyclone of progress. As a last resort, the park owners might even be required to pay for any trailers that could not be moved or resold.

Somewhere, somehow, a solution exists. Do we look for the solution or do we look the other way?

Harold E. McCollum Las Vegas