Written by Julian Emerson | Source
Leader-Telegram | July 22, 2018
Prompted by public health concerns, city of Eau Claire officials have issued orders to tear down five vacant residences in a mobile home park on the city’s north side, a move those who live there worry could be a sign of the park’s eventual closure.
Most of the 51 homes — many at least five decades old — in Maples Mobile Home Park, sandwiched between businesses in an industrial park at 1611 Western Ave., are dilapidated and in need of significant repairs, city officials said.
According to those officials and some of the park’s residents, the list of needed fixes to mobile homes is long. Windows and doors in many of the park’s structures don’t open and shut properly or are broken. Roofs in some units leak, and many have damaged or missing siding. Some homes have faulty wiring, while porches and steps in others aren’t secure.
“The fact is many of these units just aren’t safe and don’t meet minimum public health standards,” city deputy attorney Doug Hoffer said.
Those dire conditions prompted the city to issue demolition orders for five mobile homes earlier this month. The homes could be torn down later this year, although their destruction is not a certainty, Hoffer said.
On July 11 city officials met with the mobile home park’s owner, Reed Woith of Western Springs, Ill., and the park’s manager to discuss public health concerns there and possible actions Woith could take to ensure Maples remains open, Hoffer said.
Woith was unavailable for comment. Jessica Hutson Polakowski, a lawyer with the Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren law firm in Milwaukee that represents Woith, declined to comment on the situation.
In addition to run-down homes, Maples is potentially dangerous because its structures are far closer together than would be allowed under current zoning rules, Hoffer said. Two fires in the past two years have raised concerns not only about fire spreading quickly from one building to another because of their proximity but difficulties maneuvering firefighting equipment in such tight confines.
“One of the fears we have is with all of these units so old and so close together, we will have multiple units go up (in flames) at the same time,” he said.
Maples resident Emily Shields, 24, acknowledged the mobile home park’s rough conditions but said she hopes the scheduled destruction of the five homes isn’t the beginning of the park’s closure. Shields, who has lived in the mobile home park for the past two years, is mother to 4-year-old daughter Carmina and 2-year-old son Ronald, and she is pregnant with another baby due in November.
“A lot of us are concerned that (the city) will shut this place down,” Shields said. “I don’t know where I would go if I didn’t have my trailer to live in. There are a lot of people here like me with kids, and they don’t have family or someone else to move in with if we can’t live here.”
Nikki Taylor, 31, moved to the mobile home park last month when she bought a mobile home from Shields. Homeowners like her and Shields pay $330 rent per month, plus water costs, Taylor said. Those who don’t own their mobile homes but rent pay about $450 monthly to live at Maples. The average monthly rent in Eau Claire is about $800.
People living at Maples typically have little money, Taylor said, and many of them have children.
“We moved here knowing the bad reputation of this place,” Taylor said Saturday afternoon as she held her 1-year-old son Brody while two men cut down a branch that was rubbing against her home’s roof. “The trailers don’t look great. But if they shut this place down, where will we go?”
History of problems
Poor living conditions and other issues such as drug dealing and a high number of police calls are nothing new at Maples Mobile Home Park. The park has garnered increased attention in the past couple of years, in part because aging mobile homes have reached deterioration levels too bad to ignore.
The newest home in the park is 42 years old, and the majority of units there were constructed in the 1960s and have outlived being safe structures, Hoffer said.
In many cases mobile homes have not been maintained and have reached the point where making repairs is difficult, he said. Major structural repairs were not intended to those homes, he said.
Eau Claire City-County Health Department director Lieske Giese said her department has worked for years to improve living conditions at Maples. The Health Department recently cited Woith with multiple violations of the state code for mobile home parks, a sign of run-down conditions there that endanger residents’ health and safety.
Woith has a mobile home park license the Health Department oversees.
“We are working to make sure that people who live there are living in at least minimum health standards,” Giese said.
‘Awful condition’
The majority of homes at Maples are owned and not rented, meaning owners — not Woith — are responsible for maintaining the units. With park residents struggling financially, such maintenance has rarely occurred at a rate necessary to keep up homes.
“There are definitely some trailers here that should be condemned,” Shields said. “Some of these places are in awful condition.”
Repairs to the trailer she bought three months ago combined with the one she owned before selling it to Taylor have totaled several thousand dollars, Shields said.
But, like other mobile home park homeowners, she said she lacks the money to pay for the significant upgrades needed on her ramshackle residences. High medical costs related to her children’s chronic medical conditions make paying bills a struggle, said Shields, who works as a waitress and as an in-home care employee.
She said she is trying to work with city officials to make needed improvements to meet building and health codes, “but it’s hard to make repairs when you’re low income.”
Future uncertain
Giese and Hoffer said they worry about those living at Maples if the mobile home park were to close. Many living there likely would struggle to afford housing elsewhere, they said, and may add to the growing number of Eau Claire’s homeless population.
Yet they want to ensure that people living there aren’t in squalor that threatens their health and safety. They described sadness at seeing firsthand living conditions at Maples.
“It breaks my heart to see people in our community living like that,” Hoffer said.
Whether the Maples park remains open depends in large part on Woith’s willingness to improve conditions there, Hoffer said. One way that could happen is getting rid of old mobile homes and replacing them with newer, nicer models.
“If units had been replaced over time, it would be an easier transition,” Hoffer said. “But when you have all 51 units that are that old, is this really workable any more? I guess that’s what we’re going to find out.”
Contact: 715-830-5911,julian.emerson@ecpc.com
