Sonia Carballo still remembers her two children, now college students, playing with their neighbors in the streets of Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park in Sweetwater.
“They would go around here on their bikes, running and playing,” Carballo told WLRN, in Spanish, as she surveyed demolition around the neighborhood on Tuesday. “We would go to the park, I would take them to the pool.”
Carballo began moving out last week. This made her one of the roughly 200 mobile homeowners that did not budge after the landlords, Consolidated Real Estate Investments, offered the 900 families living there $14,000 last November, to leave by January. The sum progressively decreased in the following months.
A judge ruled in September in favor of the developers and they were forced to vacate the property by Tuesday afternoon. Residents in 87 households were forced to vacate Monday while 90 were pending to be served their writs Tuesday, the Miami-Dade Police Department told the Miami Herald.
READ MORE: Mobile home residents pack Miami-Dade courthouse to fight evictions for redevelopment
Many who stayed had argued that the money was not enough for them to land on their feet, especially since many are on a fixed income.
The plight of Li’l Abner's residents is playing out throughout South Florida as affordable mobile home parks are being demolished to make way for new developments. Those left behind have few options to find a reasonably priced place to live.
Li'l Abner was one of few remaining mobile home parks in Miami-Dade County as many have already moved to redevelop.
'A safe environment'
Carballo says that she's faced difficulties finding a new place because "the situation with the rent [in South Florida] isn't easy. They ask you for many requisites and you have to pay a lot up front to move."
As she spent her final hours in Li'l Abner — the lock already changed on the green mobile home she called home for nearly two decades — Carballo couldn’t help but reflect on the once tight knit community that has been overwhelmed with legal battles, protests and uncertainty since the eviction notice was first given.
“It was also a very safe environment,” Carballo said. “It was very difficult here to say there was delinquency. We always left the door open… We wouldn’t take our keys because we were surrounded by very safe neighbors.”
Almost as soon as residents were given notice to leave Li’l Abner by May 31, demolition began on trailers that had already been abandoned. WLRN reported earlier this year that the owner was cited for beginning demolitions without required permits.
Carballo said that those who left earlier in the process did so under “pressure and lies.”
She referenced the case of Vivian Hernandez, who was 61 in late December when police arrested her for refusing to leave the management office. Videos of the incident sparked backlash in the community.
Meanwhile, roughly 210 Li'l Abner residents had filed a class action lawsuit against their landlord — arguing the evictions are improper because Florida law requires the landowner to give mobile home residents the option to buy the park — which they claim didn’t happen. The landlords denied this allegation.
An El Salvadorian immigrant, the park has been Carballo’s family home since they arrived in South Florida.
“We came to this country to… want to get ahead,” Carballo said. “And these are setbacks that have hit us very hard. And so, personally, I'm just grateful because I've managed to get my children ahead.”
