The sun is slowly setting on the Euclid Beach Mobile Home park on the shores of Lake Erie.

The final descent is scheduled for Aug. 31, 2024. The 28.5-acre mobile home park in the city’s North Collinwood neighborhood will then be converted to green space that will become part of Euclid Beach Park. 

Signs of the wind down are evident. The more than 100 families being displaced continue to move, using relocation packages that must meet federal guidelines. Vacant mobile homes continue to be demolished. Residents continue to find ways to mark the final months of what is officially known as the Euclid Beach Mobile Home Community. They recently held what many believe to be the first Christmas party for residents. By this time next year, it is unlikely that they’ll be neighbors.

Leaving isn’t easy. 

Here’s why:

Residents have little chance of finding another affordable lakeside community. 

Residents had fought to keep the mobile home park from closing. Many adore living in an affordable, racially diverse lakeside community – something they say is proving impossible to replace. Most are middle-aged or seniors, who had planned on spending the rest of their lives there. 

The mobile home park’s troubled legacy complicates steps needed to shut it down.

The Western Reserve Land Conservancy, which owns the mobile home park, announced in February that it would close EBMHC, convert the land to green space and then give it to the Cleveland Metroparks.

WRLC must first contend with the mobile home community’s troubled legacy that dates back years before the nonprofit bought it in 2021. This past looms over critical things that must be done in order for WRLC to shut down the park. They range from tracking down the owners of long-abandoned mobile homes to grappling with costly water and sewer bills due to a haphazard infrastructure system fraught with years of makeshift repairs. 

Finding affordable housing in Greater Cleveland is difficult.

Realty Reimaged, the nonprofit real estate company WRLC has contracted to relocate residents, must contend with the realities of the Greater Cleveland housing market. It is more competitive than a few years ago, especially for affordable housing. Many park residents are working-class or on fixed incomes. 

“Rents are higher,” said Sonya Edwards, Realty Imagined’s executive director and principal broker. ”Private property prices are higher and interest rates are higher. All of these things affect affordability, especially when we’re talking about safe, decent and sanitary housing. It’s difficult.”

Anthony Beard, who is active in the United Residents of Euclid Beach, isn’t surprised. He said this is why residents tried to prevent the park’s demise. He is among residents who haven’t given up hope, though no funding is in place and no land has been secured, that a smaller mobile home park can be built nearby.

“I’m not in a rush to leave when I know I am going to have to pay more money to live somewhere else,” said Beard, who has lived at the EBMHC since 2007. “Where else can I pay $400 for a [monthly] lot fee?

Can homes be found for all Euclid Beach Mobile Home park families.

Residents have already begun receiving relocation packages. Some haven’t delayed  leaving EBMHC.

There were about 125 units in the mobile home park last spring, a few months after WRLC announced it would be closing the park. The nonprofit said in the fall that it would be using federal guidelines in determining relocation assistance.

Owners and renters in 10-12 units left before the guidelines were in place, according to Isaac Robb, WRLC’s vice president of planning and urban projects. Roughly another dozen have been relocated using the guidelines. This leaves about 100 families who still must find new homes. Edwards said “at least another 25 are actively looking right now.”

The relocations are being paid for through a grant by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. Last summer, the foundation announced that it was making a $10 million grant to WRLC in connection with the major redevelopment of Cleveland Metroparks’ Euclid Beach Park. At least $3.8 million of the grant is slated for recovering the $5.8 million WRLC paid for the mobile home park. The rest of the grant is primarily being used to convert the land, but it also will fund relocation packages for residents.

Residents persuaded WRLC to use federal guidelines. The Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Act, or URA, is determining how much residents will receive for such things as moving expenses and the price of their mobile homes. 

An example of the relocation help people can receive includes qualifying for up to $7,200 in rental assistance to help pay for the difference between lot or other rent at the mobile home park and their new housing.

Residents who own and live in their mobile homes qualify for what renters can receive plus additional assistance. This includes comparable replacement housing, the appraised value for their unit, and replacement housing payments up to $31,000.

Any assistance residents receive under the federal regulation isn’t considered income, but, rather, is a non-taxable resource that does not impact their eligibility for programs such as Medicaid or subsidized housing.

The appraisal is key to the URA calculations. Mobile homes tend not to be like conventional homes, which usually increase in value. Mobile homes often depreciate in value. Residents were initially concerned that appraisal values would come in low because about 75 of the previous roughly 125 units were built before 1975. This means that they do not meet the standards set by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and modifications and upgrades will not bring them into compliance. 

“I would say there is good news when it comes to appraisals,” Robb said. “I don’t want to say all, but pretty much to a person, the appraisals have exceeded the amount of the value that people paid for their unit.”

He declined to give the range of the appraisals or the range of the URA relocation assistance residents have received.

Residents fervently lobbied WRLC to adopt URA because the nonprofit was not legally required to offer any relocation assistance. But even with it, relocation is proving challenging. 

It is more than just a matter of finding affordable housing. Some residents who would like to continue living in mobile homes wonder whether there are enough affordable places in Cuyahoga County or nearby to accommodate every resident who doesn’t want to move very far from the Euclid Beach area.

For a sizable number of residents, finding housing must be balanced with other needs. Edwards said these residents have to be connected to wraparound services, such as those for people with medical issues and for low-income residents in need of housing and other subsidies. They have often qualified for such programs for years but either didn’t know that they existed or didn’t know how to apply. 

Then there are the 25 to 30 families who have’t responded to any overtures from WRLA regarding relocation assistance. Letters, telephone calls, even knocks on the doors of their mobile homes have gone unanswered.

Realty Reimagined’s three-member team includes two U.S. Department of

Housing and Urban Development-certified housing counselors. This means that they can provide housing education and counseling in a range of areas, including those relating to affordability. Despite such expertise, Edwards said the team will need help with this monumental mission of finding every resident housing. Both she and Robb believe that getting everyone placed by the deadline will be difficult, but doable. It will involve marshaling resources and expertise, perhaps throughout Greater Cleveland. 

“We’re not going to do it single-handedly,” Edwards said. “It’s going to take working with other organizations and trying to find other resources.”

Finding a new mobile home park to move to in Cuyahoga could prove challenging 

Carol McClain, who has lived at the mobile home park for seven years, learned in early December what her relocation assistance would be.

“I think I can work with this,” she recalls thinking after a Realty Reimagined agent gave her the figure.

(McClain declined to tell Signal Cleveland the dollar amount of her relocation assistance.) 

A few days later, contentment was devolving into frustration. She said she hadn’t received anything in writing. When McClain called the agent to find out why she hadn’t received a document, she said the counselor appeared to have changed some of the terms of her assistance. She said the agent  had initially said that she had the option of using the assistance to either move her double-wide home or buy a new one. Now, the agent was telling her that she could only move the unit.

Edwards told Signal Cleveland that the terms hadn’t changed and there might have been a misunderstanding. Realty Reimagined scheduled another meeting with McClain. At the meeting, she learned the option to either move or buy was still on. McClain said she’s still deciding which she will choose.

The larger issue is whether she will be able to find a mobile home park to her liking. McClain said she told Reality Reimagined that she wanted to stay in Cuyahoga County. She had expected to leave her meeting with a list of available lots and homes at mobile home parks within the county or nearby. She didn’t.

Later McClain learned that some residents had received a list of available lots and homes. Few were in the county. They were in places such as Chardon, Geneva and Ravenna. She was already familiar with the Ravenna mobile home park. She had considered it before moving to EBMHC. Ravenna was too far from family, church and other connections. McClain also rejected it for another reason. 

“The home I looked at in Ravenna was beautiful,” she said. “I thought about applying for it, but I could see that the people there weren’t taking to me as a Black woman. So I didn’t apply for it.”

Beard, who is active in the residents’ group, said McClain’s perception that Realty Reimaged needs to show residents more lots and units in Cuyahoga or nearby is not isolated. He hasn’t yet received his assistance package. However, he said other residents have expressed concerns similar to McClain’s. 

“There have been residents who have complained that the options that they have been shown have not been culturally appropriate for individuals who now live in an area with access to family members, church, cultural experiences and public transportation,” he said, adding that many residents don’t have cars.

Beard said that he was more raising concern about what appears to be a shortage of nearby mobile parks on the list than offering criticism of Reality Reimagined’s efforts. He said he is encouraged that the nonprofit acknowledges that it will take more than a three-person team to relocate all the residents. He agrees with them that the mission requires more people and connections.

Edwards said she wants residents to have a choice about where they move.

 “I am doing my very best in all situations to try to ensure that the housing options that they have are housing options they would choose for themselves,” she said.  

But Edwards said she must balance such options against the realities of the mobile home housing market, especially within Cuyahoga County and adjacent communities. High-priced mobile homes often have low lot rents. Moderately priced homes often have high lot rents. Either way, both are unaffordable for many of the Euclid Beach Mobile Home park residents.

“It is the most bizarre thing I have ever seen,” she said. “You can buy a mobile home for $110,000 in this amazing park and the lot rent is $315, or you can buy a mobile home for $28,000 in this other park, but your lot rent is $850.”

The physical landscape at the mobile home community is transforming

The Euclid Beach Mobile Home Community offers a good vantage point to experience the changing scenery of seasons. In summer, towering trees sport lush green canopies. Welcomed lake breezes subdue steamy temperatures. By winter, the trees are bare. If only there were a way to disinvite the breezes that now are making frigid temperatures even more cutting.

This year, the scenery at the mobile home park changed in other ways.

Within the last few months, WRLC began demolishing vacant mobile homes. Open spaces mark where units once stood – sometimes for decades. Some homes are in the midst of being dismantled, which often requires removing asbestos. Insulation and other innards are visible. Missing exterior walls give full view to places that people once called home. In the kitchen of one unit being prepared for demolition, a Teddy Bear sits on a kitchen counter. About 15 homes have already been demolished. 

Demolition has caused WRLC to contend with the mobile home park’s past, present and future. Once, up to 271 units were at the park. As people left, the homes in which they had lived didn’t always follow. Roughly 40 units were vacant and abandoned, Robb said. Even though some of these units had been abandoned for years, WRLC couldn’t just tear them down. They had to attempt to find owners and get their permission.

A nonprofit such as the Cuyahoga Land Bank, which has a speciality in getting title to vacant and abandoned buildings, couldn’t help them. Mobile homes have titles like vehicles, not homes.

Sometimes finding owners was fairly easy. WRLC found some titles, which had been signed but not filed with the county, in the mobile home park office. At other times they found owners through social media accounts or internet searches. For others, WRLC had to go through the legal process of proving abandonment. 

Vacant and abandoned units weren’t the only part of the mobile home park’s past that WRLC has had to tackle. A leaky, inadequate infrastructure continues to drain the nonprofit. High water and sewer bills serve as an incentive to keep to the August deadline for closing the park, officials say. 

(The mobile home park’s previous owners had a metering system that allowed them to determine how such bills would be split. Residents complained that they, and not the owners, were often charged for the unusually high water bills caused by inadequate infrastructure. WRLC had a metering system installed in which residents only pay for the water they actually use.)

The poorly designed, jerry-rigged system appears to be like a sieve. Robb offered an analysis of water and sewer bills from September 2022 to March of 2023. He said that during that time period, WRLC was only able to account for 15-46% of the total water for which the nonprofit was charged. The remainder for which they were billed, couldn’t be traced to actual water and sewer usage. He said the unaccounted for amount appears to be due to leaks or other infrastructure problems. In March, for example, Robb said the nonprofit was only able to account for 15% of what it was charged. The bottom line: WRLC lost $29,000 on the bill that month, most likely due to infrastructure-related issues.

“Addressing it [infrastructure] is really challenging,” he said. “The one plumber we had out, maybe two months ago, found a type of PVC that is only supposed to be used for interior plumbing. It was buried in the ground.”

Robb said WRLC is speaking with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District about lowering the bills.

The monthslong countdown to closing Euclid Beach Mobile Home park begins 

The long goodbyes have begun.

The Christmas party won’t be the only event thrown in recognition that the mobile home park is in its final months. For example, Beard said he wants to help organize an event to thank the larger community, who first supported residents’ effort to keep the park open and then later their push to get relocation assistance.

But for now, many want to focus on their last Christmas at the mobile home park.

McClain enjoys decorating for the holidays. This year was no exception. Red and gold fabric poinsettias are in a vase on her kitchen table. There is a little Christmas tree in the living room instead of the full-size one she usually has. A red wreath adorns a living room wall. Christmas towels hang in the kitchen.

 “I’m not putting up the stuff I usually do, but I’m trying to make it as Christmassy as possible,” she said. 

Beard’s Christmas present to himself was refusing to think about leaving the place he once thought would be his forever home. When he moved in, his two now-adult children helped him choose the unit. The room of his daughter, a recent college graduate, is the same as when she left for school.

“I told her, ‘After the first of the year, you might want to come and start cleaning out your room,” he said.

Beard pauses.

“That’s when what is happening is going to become real for me,” he said.