Evictions leave residents with no place to go

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Terri Hooker has a tendency to tack the phrase “but that’s OK” to the end of nearly everything she says.

It’s OK that she walks 1.2 miles to work every morning at 6. Then back home again that afternoon. It’s OK that her broken-down trailer was just condemned, it’s even OK that her own uncle put her in it to begin with.

She lived in a derelict trailer park at the tail-end of Anderson Street where, two Fridays ago on the eve of Bristol’s worst snowstorm in a decade, two mobile homes were condemned by the city – orange “unfit for occupancy” notices taped to their windows – effective immediately.

Hooker’s was one of them.

Her uncle, Leon Smith, manages the Alpine Mobile Home Park where Hooker’s trailer became one more on a growing list of those condemned and hauled away.

Hooker and her long-time boyfriend Rodney Vigil are, for now, squatting in Smith’s trailer across the street from their former home. Smith is getting restless for them to leave, but Hooker and Vigil have nowhere to go.

Who's to blame?

Leon Smith doesn’t blame himself for the series of events that culminated with his niece being forced out of her home on a snowy afternoon a week before Christmas. He blames the city. The city, in turn, blames Smith.

The Smith-City battle began more than a year ago, when a trailer Smith owned caught fire because he was running an extension cord from one trailer to another next door, said Karl Cooler, code administrator for Bristol Tennessee Code Enforcement. Meanwhile, the police department frequented the trailer park for nuisance calls, domestics and drug dealers.

At that point, Smith owned a handful of the 20 or so trailers on the uphill cul-de-sac. Two more of the trailers were condemned in May.

Then Smith sold another old trailer – without having it inspected – to a single mother with young children. He considered it a fixer-upper. When the owner went to get permits to renovate, the city came out and condemned the place and gave the family 30 days to get out.

Smith recalls code enforcement telling him that selling it was “almost criminal.”

“I warned her at the time not to let the city in,” he said in his defense.

In May, Smith tired of haggling with the city and suspected they were coming after each trailer as a personal vendetta against him. So he unloaded the homes, selling them off to their tenants.

Hooker and Vigil paid $500.

Then, on Sept. 22, city code enforcement officers went to the Better Property Board seeking a public hearing on “all units” in the park. The board is an appointed
group that meets every month to approve the city’s execution of property codes. Or, as Community Development Director Shari Brown put it: “We can’t tear things down without their approval.”

The minutes from that September meeting read: “Karl Cooler stated that he expected to post the mobile homes as unfit and after the thorough inspections would determine whether there would be a notice to vacate or an immediate notice to vacate.”

Cooler said the board declined the request for the whole park, advising him to bring back each property individually.

That’s harder than it sounds, Cooler said.

Mobile home ownership in Tennessee essentially works like car titles. Yet when Smith sold the trailers, the titles were never signed over. To further confuse the ownership status, Smith kept the utilities in his name because, he said, most of the tenants couldn’t afford the deposits.

So, when the city wanted to inspect, they knocked on Smith’s door first.

Cooler said they tried everything to contact the trailers’ residents. They first hand-delivered two letters to each of the five homes they wanted to inspect, with no reply. Then they left cards with contact information, but there was no contact from the residents.

Hooker and Vigil swear they heard nothing from the city, it was only Smith who mentioned the inspections occasionally.

He told all of the residents not to let the inspectors in: “I told everybody that the city says it can get a search warrant, but I do not think they can. I said, ‘Make them show you a search warrant.’ ”

Smith was wrong.

A judge signed the warrants Dec. 10, and they were good for 10 days. Code enforcement officers executed the warrants Dec. 19, the last working day before their expiration, despite the snow and impending holiday.

The officers inspected five trailers that day, posting all as unfit for occupancy – but two were in such poor condition the residents were immediately evacuated.

Just temporary

Fifteen months ago, Hooker and Vigil moved from Arizona to the Alpine Mobile Home Park.

“He helped us out a lot at first,” Hooker said of Smith. “We paid what we could, but he carried us for a couple of months. But since we got jobs and started working, we’ve been paying him back faithfully. If we got $100, he got $75 of it.”

Trailer number four, the one condemned this month, was supposed to be temporary. Their deal was that Smith would either fix the electrical problems, or move them to a more habitable trailer. Neither of those things happened.

“The city, they’re right,” Hooker said. “The timing was bad, but as far as them condemning it – they’re right, and it’s been like that ever since we’ve been here. It should never have been rented, never been lived in.”

There was only electricity in the back of the home, so the couple strung extension cords from the back to the front.

Karl Cooler said that was the least of the problems. He said the trailer reeked of pet urine and feces, animal hair on the carpet was inches thick, the exterior walls were visible from the inside, ceiling fans were caving in, the list goes on.

Hooker and Vigil do not deny they were living in squalor. They simply said they couldn’t do better.

Cooler said that generally speaking, when the city renders someone homeless for one reason or another, the city finds somewhere for them to go. But that didn’t happen in this case. First, because the city wasn’t able to get in touch with any of the residents beforehand, they had no idea what type of family situations were affected.

Secondly, Cooler figured because Hooker was Smith’s niece, she was his problem.

“I have no idea,” Cooler said, when asked what living arrangements had been made for Hooker and Vigil. “It’s his family.”

Smith lives in a house in Sullivan County and uses the trailer in the Alpine Mobile Home occasionally as something of a crash-pad. He collects the lot rent for the
family that owns the trailer park itself in exchange for a free place to park his trailer.

Vigil, seeking a more permanent home, hopes to buy Smith’s part-time trailer.

“I’ll offer you $600 for this place, $400 up front,” Vigil tells Smith.

“But, if I party downtown, it’s cheaper to get a cab to come here than to get a cab to go home,” Smith replies.

“The sofa would always be here for you,” Vigil pleads.

But Smith shakes his head, “no.”

cgalofaro@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2531