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There is Hope For Hiatt Mobile Home Park
If we demand it.
It has finally turned cold in Greensboro. A mother is walking her children bundled up in sweatshirts and hats down the broken sidewalk toward the school bus. The neighborhood’s work trucks left hours ago, before the sun came up, as adults left for their jobs.
It feels like any day, but the days here recently have been marked by a deadline: The families living in the Hiatt Street trailer park have until Jan. 1 to get out.
The families have always paid their lot rent; most own their trailers out and out; some have lived here for decades. But in a twist of fate reserved only for the poor, the land these homes sit on is being sold out from underneath them.
Hiatt Street residents received a letter from Lynn Anderson and Family Properties of NC saying that the trailer park had been sold and they need to go. This isn’t true. Jerry Wass and Owl’s Roost Partners only have an “option agreement” to purchase the property and the sale is not final. Owl’s Roost gave the nearby, wealthier Lindley Park neighborhood a 40-minute presentation about the proposed development, but they have never spoken to the families they plan to build on top of. Hiatt families have called, emailed, even hand-delivered letters to Anderson, Wass and their companies asking to meet, but no one has ever replied.
