Yahoo Finance ‘Does Frank White even care?’ Jackson County displacing 100 families to build new jail
Urban Schaefer, a disabled U.S. Marine with emphysema, says doctors have given him “maybe five years” to live. The 64-year-old, who is on oxygen and mostly confined to bed, has for the last six years lived on disability with his wife and 81-year-old mother in a 14-by-70-foot single-wide trailer at the Heart Village mobile home park in Kansas City.
Schaefer expected to spend the rest of whatever time he has left there, too. But that changed when Jackson County bought the trailer park to build a jail in its place. Now the 100 families who live in Heart Village have to be out by February.
His wife, Nicole Schaefer, is worried they could end up with nothing and nowhere to go. Their trailer, like many others, may be too old to move, under federal environmental regulations, so every penny they have invested in it will be lost. “I just want to sit down and cry,” she said. “Does Frank White even care that some people here might end up homeless?”
In the two weeks since learning the county literally bought the ground out from under them, residents haven’t heard anything definitive about their future from county legislators. Whatever the reason for that lack of communication, it’s inhumane and absolutely unacceptable. Did you county officials think that because these aren’t wealthy people, no one would notice or care? Wrong again.
That they have to worry about where they’ll go during a new spike in a deadly pandemic makes this situation even more indefensible. (Do we have to get U.S. Rep. Cori Bush over here, camping out at Heart Village to bring attention to their predicament?)
These tax-paying, home-owning Jackson County residents need more than vague promises that you’ll help them out somehow.
What’s a lot more precise? The county plans to charge the same residents they’re forcing out $400 a month for a land fee and $300 a month in rent between the time the county takes possession and when residents have to leave.
“That’s unconscionable,” said legislator Crystal Williams, who said she only recently learned these details and plans to fight for residents of the trailer park, which is in her district. “But I have only one vote.”
‘Laughable’ idea that $5,000 is enough to relocate
Several other residents of Heart Village — “a nice place to live,” according to the sign at the U.S. 40 highway entrance — said they’re unconvinced that the county will do anything meaningful to help them.
The county bought the trailer park knowing its plans would disrupt families with few resources. They should have been part of the purchase discussion from the time county officials began looking at the 107-acre tract of land more than a year ago.
Last month, Jackson County made a deal to purchase Heart Village from Park Properties Inc. of Wichita so it could build a $260 million county detention center on the property. The county has agreed to pay $7 million for the land and expects to close on the transaction in about three weeks.
“Legally, we need to get through the closing,” before contacting each resident, said Caleb Clifford, chief of staff for County Executive Frank White. Late last month though, county officials announced the purchase to residents and told them the county would pay some toward relocation and give each household a $5,000 voucher usable for rent.
Gregg Ufford, whose 90-year-old mother Joy Ufford has lived in the trailer park for 51 years, correctly called that sum “laughable.”
“I couldn’t buy the shed behind my house for that,” he said.
Samuel Pinedo is a 45-year-old granite fabricator with a wife and three children who has lived in the double-wide, three bedroom, 49-year-old trailer he owns since 2009. When he bought the trailer it was in bad shape. Pinedo put thousands of dollars into fixing it up — new floors, paint inside and out and granite throughout. He moved into the trailer park “so I could own my own home.” Like others, he wants the county to “buy me out.”
RoNisha Rogers, a single mother of seven young children, was homeless once. She saved for a long time to get a rent-to-own plan at the trailer park. She’s still paying on the trailer, but she can’t take it with her, because it’s not hers. “I won’t get back any of the money I’ve put into this place,” Rogers said. “I don’t want to rent. I want my own home. That’s all I’ve been trying to do.”
If out of the 40 locations the county had to choose from, this spot — alongside Interstate 70 and close enough to hospitals and the county courthouses — is the perfect one, then county officials have to be prepared to pull out the checkbook and help every resident make a smooth transition to a new home.
“If the county fails to act” in this way, said Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, “they will be sending a clear message: They would rather house us in their jails.”
