By Juliette Rihl | Arizona Republic
The city of Phoenix could be stepping in to help mobile home residents facing displacement.
The City Manager’s Office issued to the city council and the mayor on Nov. 1 a draft research report outlining how the city can help mobile home residents facing imminent displacement and reduce the risk of similar situations in the future.
The draft report was written in response to three established mobile home parks pushing residents out, either by raising rents or redeveloping the land. Those parks are Weldon Court, Periwinkle and Las Casitas, now called Beacon.
Immediate solutions proposed in the report include providing affected residents Emergency Housing Vouchers, case management services, rental payment assistance and homeownership down payment assistance.
It also proposed medium- and long-term fixes to assist mobile home residents throughout Phoenix in the future. Those included modifying mobile home park permit requirements to make it easier to create or expand parks, incentivizing property owners to operate mobile home parks and partnering with nonprofits to buy existing parks.
