The Lot Rent That Doubled Overnight
I told him about the notice. He listened. Then he sighed.
“Homer, I’m going to be straight with you. I can’t cap a lot rent. The county doesn’t have that authority, and if I told you it did, I’d be lying. That’s between the park owner and the tenant. I wish it weren’t.”
“I didn’t call to ask you to cap anything.”
“Then what did you call for?”
“I’d like you to come sit in a room Thursday night. I’m getting everyone together.”
“I can come sit in a room. I can’t promise you more than that.”
“Sitting is the whole ask.”
Then I made two other calls. The first was to Vivian Pettit, president of Community State Bank on the square, who sang in the church choir with Corinne for years. The second was to Bernice Merritt, whose number Vivian gave me. Bernice worked for a nonprofit out of Kansas City that helped the residents of mobile-home parks buy the dirt under their own homes.
“Mr. Eastman,” Bernice said, “it’s been done more than you’d think. Residents form a cooperative. They buy the park together. I’m not going to tell you it’s quick. Most of the ones I’ve worked on took a year or two, and that’s with an owner who wants to sell.”
“This one doesn’t.”
“Then it’s slower, and it may not happen at all. But a company that finds out the tenants are organized and the county is watching will sometimes look at its own numbers again. That part is cheaper than a purchase and it comes first.”
I looked out my window. A light was on in Edith’s kitchen.
“Ma’am,” I said, “I can get you a room full of people.”
We held it in the community room at the veterans hall on Ash Street, because Sonny Paulsen is a member and he got us the key. Thirty-seven of the forty-one households came. Some of them had to be driven. Nordstrom Alcott came in on his oxygen cart with his daughter carrying the tank, and the room went quiet when he rolled in.
I stood up. My knees hurt. I did not have notes.
“I’m not a speaker,” I said. “I’m just the one who knocked. I went to every door. There are forty-one homes. Twenty-nine of us live on under $1,600 a month. Nine of us are veterans. This notice would take $196,800 a year out of this room, and it would do it by waiting for us to be scared. I was mad on Tuesday. Mad doesn’t do anything. I’d like us to do something that works.”
I turned the room over to Bernice. She talked for twenty minutes about how a resident cooperative works. Each home buys a small share. The members vote. The lot rent is set to cover only what it costs to run the place: the note, the taxes, the insurance, the lagoon.
“But we’d have to buy it,” Eunice Tibbs said. “We don’t have that.”
“Not on your own,” Bernice said. “And not this month.”
Vivian Pettit said her piece from her chair, without standing. She has a voice that has said no to a lot of people over the years.