Uprooted Community at Congress Mobile Home Park Grieves for Neighbor, Neighborhood

Vigil for Congress Mobile Home Park resident Greg Hopkins on August 3 (Photo by John Anderson)

Trouble had been brewing for months at the Congress Mobile Home Park between Stassney and William Cannon in far south Austin when Maria Rosie Muñoz heard a knock at her door. It was the property manager telling her she was being evicted. She had 60 days to vacate the premises. "I was in shock," Muñoz said. "It took me a week to digest it and just – where was I going? What was I going to do? I honestly couldn't afford to transition into an apartment complex. I live within my means."

Muñoz was left scrambling. The mobile home park she'd lived at for five years was purchased in December by Paydar Prop­erties, a multibillion-dollar La Jolla, Calif.-based real estate investment and management firm with a "specific focus on investments in undervalued and distressed properties." By July 1, the last residents were told they needed to clear out. Muñoz has since relocated her RV to a park on East Ben White Boulevard – and though her housing expenses have increased by $500 per month, living miles farther away from her job as a cashier at Lowe's and her neighborhood, she still thinks she's one of the lucky ones.

Muñoz had only lived at the park for years, not decades. Her RV was movable. And while she couldn't stay in her neighborhood, she did manage to stay in Austin. Not all of her neighbors are having similar success. "Some of these homes have been there longer than 30 years, so … they're weathered, and you can't put them on the highway to move," she said. "Maybe the flooring is not very good, the framing is not very good – it's good just staying put, but put it on the highway? No."

The precarity of the looming evictions hit home on July 23, when Greg Hopkins, a resident struggling to find a new place to live, died at his home in the park. Community members held a vigil for him last week. The park's community has long been tight-knit, partially because of the longevity of many of its members, and partially because it has had to be. Residents formed a tenant association to fight against displacement in 2019 and were successful. This struggle, however, has proven more challenging. The new owner is not seeking to rezone the property, but just to replace the current tenants with higher­-paying ones – giving the current residents little legal recourse against displacement. Residents have continued to organize, but Paydar's chairman has refused to meet with them. "He doesn't like the look of those trailers," Gabby Garcia of Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA) said of Paydar CEO Reza Paydar. "He saw these people as disposable."

City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who attended the vigil, noted that Austin passed an ordinance in 2016 requiring that developers evicting low-income tenants would have to pay into a relocation fund, but its implementation was blocked by the state of Texas. "It's an example of mass displacement that is happening, and another example of how the state preempts municipalities from intervening in situations like this," Fuentes said. She said she's looking at introducing a budget amendment on tenant relocation support along with a potentially broader mobile home preservation strategy, but that the clock is ticking with people being displaced daily.

Muñoz said she was intent on staying in Austin after her eviction from the park, even as her daughter urged her to relocate to San Antonio. But she said she's increasingly concerned about what the city she moved to in 1996 is becoming. "We're not going to have rooted people," she said. "We can't afford it."