Manassas mobile home residents forced out, seek options

MANASSAS, Va. — February 28 looms large for residents of the East End Mobile Home Park.

That’s the date a property management firm which manages the park told them to be out of the homes. Afterward, the Manassas City is on track to forward with a deal to purchase the property for $1.9 million.

That would leave some families in about 58 trailers homeless and city residents the proud owners of a property where, since at least 2008, raw sewage has been seeping up from a failed sewer system. Multiple orders from the city to repair the system since 2008 and bring it into compliance have went ignored by the property owner Tim Cope.

If the sale goes to closing, Cope must see that all residents are gone, and all trailers removed before any money changes hands. Repairs could cost as much as $700,000, and that’s money Cope doesn’t have, according to multiple sources familiar with the city’s proposal to buy the land.

Cope, nor the firm that manages the property Platinum Property Managment, spoke during a citizen comment time during a City Council meeting Monday night. Many residents of the trailer park, which sits near the intersection of Liberia Avenue and Route 28, did speak out.

Melissa Watson told city leaders that it would be difficult to move her and her family out of the only home they’ve known for the past 14 years, in the dead of winter, in the middle of her son’s school year.

“Moving in February will have an impact on his education and his SOL scores,” she said. “There’s a real possibility that many of our neighbors will become homeless, and many of us will not be able to reside in Manassas City once we leave because there is not enough affordable housing.”

City leaders are concerned about the health and safety of those living a trailer park with a failed sewer system. They’re also concerned that sewage is mixing with storm water which is treated and sent back to city residents for use.

Another city leader, Councilman Marc Aveni who voted against the deal to purchase the park, is concerned that the city is now involved in a firestorm of controversy surrounding the park. Aveni said the city should not become, as some have suggested, a landlord by purchasing the property and letting residents stay beyond February, and perhaps until the problem is fixed.

He does suggest other options.

“The city could cancel the deal… we’re not the owners yet. We could work with the owner, and find out what repairs need to be made? Then we could work with different groups to make the repairs,” said Aveni. “But no one is talking about them. Everyone is saying ‘just get out.”

John Steinbach has worked with groups to help people living in trailers. When the Holly Acres Mobile Home Park flooded in 2011, his Woodbridge Workers Committee secured nearly $1 million in state and federal grants to help residents afford repairs to their trailers and to purchase new appliances from HH Gregg.

Some of those grants were leftover monies awarded to the state following an earthquake in August of that year which shook Virginia and the rest of the east coast. It’s unlikely that similar grants will be available for East End Mobile Home Park residents, Steinbach said.

Residents were notified in August that they would need to vacate their properties by the end of February. In the end, some residents plead with city leaders for more time while others said their mobile homes are in such poor condition they could not be moved, which is a violation of city zoning laws that require mobile homes must retain the ability to be moved.