News

Trailer park could be shut down as 'public nuisance'

A 26-year-old mother of a newborn lives in a trailer with no running water.

By Bill Moss, Published: April 3, 2015

A 'last resort'

Faherty said he sympathizes with the young mom and is trying to help her by connecting her to the Hendersonville Housing Authority and other options.
"I know she just wants to get out of here," he said. "The problem is it's so hard to find those other places. Those assistance programs have those deep waiting lists."
The crisis at Alpine Woods has illustrated in a stark and urgent way the lack of affordable housing in Henderson County. People are living in squalid conditions and getting by with plastic bottles of water because there is no alternative. If a judge were to shut it down with the rap of a gavel, the residents might be no better off.
Brandon Dolen and Travis LeBeau say drug dealers often try to break in and steal things."The problem with that is there's 70 or 80-some families and there's not that much moderately priced housing in all of Western North Carolina that's vacant right now," one official said.
David Jacklin, director of the Homeward Bound housing assistance program for Henderson County, has been working with the group to find homes for families whose trailers have been condemned. He's been able to resettle three.
The conditions at the park are "very unsatisfactory," Jacklin said. "They do not meet any housing standards that we have. The fact that there has not been adequate water supply is very concerning to me from a health standpoint. The fact that some of the residents have been told that they're paying for their house, to own it, but do not have paperwork to show for that is very concerning to me."
A study conducted for the Asheville Housing Consortium, an agency that works on affordable housing in Buncombe and Henderson counties, showed that 66.7 percent of tenants were "cost burdened" or severely "cost burdened" by their rent — paying more than 30 percent or more than 50 percent of their household income on it. Of seven subsidized housing projects surveyed, none had a vacancy, said the survey, by Bowen National Research.
The practical effect of that, as Connet and Stout pointed out, is that Alpine Woods Resort can't be abruptly closed. If a judge ordered the place bulldozed today as a public nuisance, the residents would have nowhere to go. Even the owner knows that his park really is the last resort for some tenants.
"I've got several people that just can't rent nowhere because they're on probation," Newell said.
The only bright side, Jacklin said, is that the Alpine Woods story could wake people up.
"It's just a very unfortunate dilemma, and I honestly think that this is not the only place like this in Henderson County," he said. "This is the tip of iceberg and maybe with the Alpine Woods situation the community will come out and say, 'What else is out there that have these same living conditions?'
"These are people. These are folks who need a place to stay. It goes back to affordable housing in this community. Here is a landlord who is offering housing at an affordable rate. However, it does not meet any housing standards.
"When you have a resident that says, 'I may not have running water, I may have holes in my floor but I've got a roof over my head and it's better than living on the street' — as human being that should not be the type of statement we should hear in this community."