SWEETWATER, Fla. – Residents of the Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park are packing up as they prepare to face eviction in the new year.
The homes at the sprawling Sweetwater park, home to about a quarter of the city’s population, are called mobile homes, but many of the homes in the community have been here for so long that they are no longer mobile — they would fall apart if moved.
This means any money spent on these homes is essentially now lost.
That’s the case for Gudelia Platt. The 75-year-old former cafeteria worker thought she had purchased her forever home.
“This is the place I bought thinking this would be a long time to be here,” Platt said.
It was a modest mobile home she bought with her late husband five years ago for just over $100,000, using their life savings.
“Everybody (felt) comfortable, everybody relaxed, many years, you can stay here,” she said.
That all changed when she came home to an eviction notice.
“First thing that came to my mind, where will I go?” Platt said. “(Everything’s) so expensive.”
Platt is among the hundreds who must now leave due to redevelopment plans. Her home is too old to move and she only owns the structure, not the land underneath.
“If you try to move, it is going to fall apart,” she said.
It’s now essentially worthless. That $100,000 investment has vanished.
Some of these homes had been sold within the last few months.
“There was absolutely no indication that the owners were planning to develop this land,” resident Carlos Couce told Local 10 News on Tuesday.
Couce bought his home in June. Local 10 News learned that some real estate agents created companies to buy the homes in January and sell them only months later, raising questions about whether they knew many of the homes would soon lose all of their value.
Residents here want answers.
“It’s simply unfair what they’re doing to everyone that lives here,” Couce said.
Platt said, “I can’t relax at night, so what I do during the daytime, every time I can, I’m just laying down. I can’t even sleep at night. This is a really big nightmare that I have in my whole life.”
A class action lawsuit has been filed against the developers, the city and the county arguing the eviction notices are illegal.
The park is officially slated to close in May.