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Residents of the Applegrove Mobile Home Park have
received a reprieve from the eviction notices that were hand-delivered to
them a few days after Christmas. The little trailer park, nestled between the end of
Spring Street and the railroad track, just around the corner from the
Warehouse, changed hands in December, and new owner Brian Jay Shirley
wanted the place cleared out by Feb. 1. But tenants — some of whom
had lived there more than a decade — said their trailers were too old
to move and cited an Illinois law requiring mobile-home-park landlords to
give tenants at least 12 months’ notice [see Dusty Rhodes,
“Trailer park trashed,” Jan. 4]. “You’re looking at 10 or 11 families that
are soon to be without homes,” tenant Amanda Adair told a reporter in
January. Now, however, 27-year-old Adair and her young family
are having their mobile home moved free of charge into another Springfield
trailer court, thanks to the efforts of Bobbie Hahn, founder of Loving God
Out Loud ministry. Hahn, who has worked in the mobile-home business, not
only found other parks willing to donate moving services, she also
persuaded attorney Duane Young to represent Applegrove residents pro bono
to negotiate a compromise with Shirley. Shirley agreed to let the tenants stay at Applegrove
rent-free through the end of May, Young says. “[Shirley] was, in some respects, fairly
generous, I thought,” Young says. “Once we connected, he seemed
reasonable and my folks seemed reasonable, and we struck a deal.”
Shirley, who declined to return calls seeking comment
in January, elected not to respond again this week when Young relayed a
request for comment. Hahn says she intervened at the request of a city
employee. Hahn has been involved with Mayor Tim Davlin’s task force
on homelessness and often works with such agencies as Contact Ministries
and the Parent Help Line. A former mobile-home dealer, she had operated a
business called Two Sisters Mobile Home Finders, locating trailers for
customers. She knew that scrapped mobile homes end up in the
landfill and homeless families end up crowding shelters. So in 2005 she
began matching homeless families with vacant mobile homes. “I just saw two problems that could help each
other, and I thought, ‘Why not?’” she says.
Over the past year and a half, Hahn’s
organization has put 18 families into refurbished trailers, sometimes
dealing with landlords reluctant to accept tenants with credit problems or
criminal histories. “We don’t discriminate against anybody
for anything at all. We don’t make people go to church. We try to
just help everybody,” she says.
For the Applegrove residents, Hahn’s task was
somewhat easier: She just had to find parks willing to accept older mobile
homes. She found two parks willing to move their trailers for free and a
third willing to give new tenants six months’ free lot rent. Hahn also connected Applegrove tenant Colt Farley,
whose home had been knocked off its foundation during the 2006 tornadoes,
with a grant that will allow him to purchase a conventional single-family
home. Hahn says the tenants aren’t the only ones who
benefited from the situation: She says she made several cherished new
friends — Farley, Adair, and another trailer owner, Judy Relford.
“It’s just a good feeling,” Hahn
says. “There’s nothing more gratifying in life than seeing some
efforts from everybody accomplish something good.”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at
drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Feb 22-28, 2007.
