FLORIDA CITY, Fla. – The clock is ticking for residents of a mobile home park in Florida City.
The property has been sold and they have until Wednesday to get out.
Residents don’t think they have been given enough notice, but the mayor said they have known this was going to happen for months.
The people living there are mostly low-income, long-term residents, and most have no idea where to go.
“We have nowhere to go,” said resident Cynthia Thomas. “This is our home. This is where we live.”
Residents have been told they need to get off the land by Wednesday or they would be trespassing.
“Some of them, they can’t move,” said community activist Carmen Tejada. “Some of them have vehicles that are too old to move so that means they have to abandon their home. With a six-day notice.”
Florida City Mayor Otis Wallace said there were three public meetings with him at City Hall in October to answer any of the resident’s questions, and the mayor said he told them they’d have until at least after Christmas to find a new place to live.
But many people say, after rumors of the sale for years, they didnt believe it.
“They told us they were going to sell the park but never told us specifically when they did,” said resident Yamil Soltura. “The only thing is they put a banner up there at the front that said the park is sold, no more long-term stays.”
Either way, many of the people living there are elderly, ill or can’t afford to go anywhere else, and feel they’ve been duped.
Mayor Wallace said while he feels for them, there is a contract in place to sell the site for millions of dollars, and taxpayers can’t afford to keep paying for the land.
“The city is willing to be reasonable,” he said. “The letter sent by our attorney was to spur them to action. The city is really serious, the jig is up, it’s time to start finding a place to stay.”
On Monday, representatives from the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust and from Camillus House came to speak to residents and give whatever help they could.
Local 10 News was also told an attorney is expected to file an injunction sometime Monday to stop the evictions.