This is a hard time to move, no matter who you are, but especially for people living at the poverty line. Moving can be expensive, assistance is stretched thin, and COVID means that group living situations aren’t necessarily safe.
About 300 of Clarksville’s most financially vulnerable residents — many of them elderly — recently discovered that they are facing exactly that conundrum: the owner of their trailer park intends to redevelop the property.
He recently pushed back their move out date by a few months, but that is still a major challenge. Alexis Clark is a reporter with The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper who is following the story, and she spoke with WPLN News about the updates.
Nina Cardona: First of all, help us understand the community we’re talking about.
Alexis Clark: Campbell House Trailer Park consists of residents who are over the age of 55 to 60. The majority of them are disabled. A lot of the residents do not have vehicles. There are also children in the residence, but there is a population of elderly people more than anything, and some may also even be bedridden.
NC: In your story you mentioned a number of individuals, including a woman who lives there herself but is also caring for her elderly mother who lives in another trailer. Can you tell me a little bit about her?
AC: Yes, her name is Samantha Dobbs. I believe she was 51 years old and she takes care of her disabled uncle. She is also on disability. You know, she gets the same amount of money every single month with no savings. That just makes her situation twice as much for her because she has to figure out what she’s going to do with her own elderly mother.
NC: What’s your sense of how realistic it is for them to find a new home even with this extension?
AC: Honestly, I don’t know. And I’m only saying that because it’s not just an RV park, it’s 13 acres of large mobile homes; some of them don’t have axles, some of them don’t have wheels to move. A lot of [residents] are thinking they are going to be homeless, and that was my biggest concern.
There is another trailer park that is a mile down from Campbell Heights that invited them to come over there. They were like, “Hey, we’ll pick up your trailers. We just need $12,000 to 15,000 to move it,” and I’m sure it’s not an option for a lot of the residents there.
NC: When you first reported the story, it sounded as though the owner hadn’t really taken any steps to inform the residents, although the manager had taken the initiative to let people know. You’ve since reported an extension to May has been granted. Has the communication with residents improved or increased?
AC: From my understanding, it has. They are opening another office at Campbell Heights in February for residents to make appointments and to discuss their problems and discuss [what happens] if they can’t realistically move by then, or what can they do to help them move by May 30th, things of that nature. But that’s not happening until February.
NC: The developer is the brother of the county mayor. Are either of them facing any kind of blowback for displacing people, especially during a difficult time like this?
AC: A lot of the residents were concerned about that. The majority of the residents were saying, “They think we’re the little people. We don’t know what we’re going to do. We don’t know how to get a lawyer. We don’t know if this is legal.”
And I when I spoke with Robert Durrett about the incident, I asked him: Did this have anything to do with his brother or any relations with any family ties? And he confirmed with me that this did not have anything to do with his brother and that [his brother] may have not even actually been aware of what was going on. He said this was his all move with his business partners in their rental company.
Alexis Clark plans to follow this story over the next year. You can find her original report on the Leaf Chronicle website, here.
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