In February 2022, David Gregory stepped in to purchase the Leesburg Mobile Park when the community’s 75 families faced displacement from a planned development. Now, it is Gregory who is pushing them to move off the property.
Residents this week began receiving letters saying they must vacate the property by the end of the year. Gregory is offering cash incentives of up to $6,000 to encourage early movers as well as $10,000 in relocation assistance.
After staving off evictions—and development—for more than two years, it is not the outcome he envisioned.
“The town and the county do not want them to be there,” Gregory said about the inability to find local government partners to address the residents’ plight.
Gregory said he began telling residents a year ago they should be looking for new homes and he met with them last month during a community meeting at the Douglass School to roll out the deadline.
Residents have been meeting, too, including a gathering Monday night at the community’s playground. Most say they recognize Gregory’s rights as the landowner but are unsure what options are available to them. And even if some of the mobile homes could be moved—many are not in condition to do so—there is no place to relocate them under the county’s zoning regulations. They are faced with leaving their equity behind.
That is the case for Marvin Navarro who bought his trailer six months ago, moving his family from a more expensive rental space in Sterling. He’s invested more than $35,000 in the purchase and renovations—investments he could be forced to walk away from by December.
“I don't know what's going on. Like one week ago, I hear this situation, and then I said, man, it's crazy for me. I'm confused,” he said.
Betsy Andino lives in a trailer home with her husband, who recently lost his leg in an accident.
“We always wanted to sit down and talk and find a solution. I think talking is part of the solution to everything. But in this case, it was just ‘I want to give you the final notice, and you guys do what you want to do.’ It doesn't work like that, because it doesn't give us any chance to come up with ideas, solutions and all that stuff,” she said.
Emma Ortiz said she was worried about the impact the move will have on the children in the neighborhood.
“We're hard-working families. We're not asking, like a lot of people might say, that we want everything for free. No, we want to work for what it is for the solution. That's how it is. We all pay taxes to the county and the town.”
The last time the neighborhood faced eviction, the family who owned and operated the trailer park since the 1960s planned for retirement by selling the 7.2-acre property to a developer for $11 million. That sale fell through in the face of public opposition. Gregory then bought the property with thoughts of eventually helping to relocate the residents to other land he owned, but those plans were stymied by county zoning regulations.
“From day one, we knew the trailers could not stay there forever,” he said.
Gregory questions the commitment of local leaders to address affordable housing concerns despite the huge influx of tax revenue in recent years. And while the county board is talking about allowing tiny homes, he notes recent zoning changes strengthened the ban on mobile homes.
“Their dislike of trailers is evident,” he said.
As far as continuing with the trailer park or redeveloping the property for use by residents in similar economic circumstances, Gregory doesn’t see that in the cards.
“I don’t believe the town or the county want affordable housing to be there,” he said.
For the residents, there is uncertainty ahead.
“During the community meeting yesterday, we all got to the point, everybody to the same point, that we want to relocate. We want a place where we can move. We’re not here to fight for his land. We understand that this is his land. That's the message. We're not here to appropriate something that's his, OK? But we want a place where we can go. We don't have a place to go,” Rico Lopez said.
“We want the best solution for everybody. We’re not here to fight with anybody. We want to find a good solution for everybody,” Ortiz said.