Jenny Rolon bought a run-down mobile home at Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport four years ago, quickly turning it into a nice place.
She paid $5,000 for the trailer, but says she dished out another $25,000 on renovations over the years — a new kitchen and bathroom; all new floors, windows and lighting; and lots of bright white paint.
“It’s not my trailer,” Rolon said. “It’s my home.”
After moving from Puerto Rico in 2018, the 51-year-old is among the many residents who planned to stay for years at the Patrick Henry Mobile Home Park.
Tenants, who’ve grown accustomed to the sounds of airplanes taking off and landing, say the trailer park is comfortable with abundant shade and conveniently located near major commercial areas. It’s a community, they say, where there’s little crime, children play freely and neighbors help each other.
But the Peninsula Airport Commission, which owns the property, is closing the park and kicking everyone out.
A lease termination notice posted on the park’s community mailbox stand two weeks ago blindsided many of the 77 tenants and their families. The original notice said the trailer owners must “vacate the property” by Aug. 28, though that was later moved to Nov. 5 because of legal requirements.
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A brewing legal battle
Some residents plan to fight back.
About 20 tenants — and counting — have scraped together $8,500 to hire a lawyer to take on the airport. At a minimum, they want the airport to pay a fair price for their modest homes. But the ultimate goal, some say, is to get the airport to reverse course.
“God is the power,” said Rolon, who hopes the legal battle and the power of prayer can save the trailer park.
Standing near her kitchen table on a recent weekday afternoon, Rolon displayed cash and several 7-Eleven cashier’s checks from fellow residents to pay for an attorney. A man who heard about the pending closure on TV wrote a $1,200 check to make up the shortfall.
That attorney, Nathaniel J. Webb III, told the Daily Press he plans to start with a letter to the Peninsula Airport Commission, the six-member public board that oversees the airport.
“They weren’t assuming that it would be a worthless trailer,” Webb said of residents. “You weren’t expecting that you’d spend a sum of money to buy it, and then you make improvements to it — with the result being that you wake up one morning in May of 2022 and the Airport Commission says we’ll give you $2,000 to go away.”
The airport is offering incentives to leave early — $2,000 by the end of May, $1,000 by June and $500 by August. Residents who remain won’t be required to pay monthly rent.
As a group of about 15 friends and neighbors gathered on the street to talk to a reporter this week, 40-year-old Aimee Kinsey, who’s lived at the park for 20 years, said the thought of losing what they have “hit me like a ton of bricks.”
“It’s not the location, but the family that we’re losing,” she said. “They’re all gonna be gone in a few months. We’re not going to have any of this.”
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‘It’s not bringing in the income’
The 75-acre park on airport property has been around since at least the 1950s. It extends over several streets off McManus Boulevard, with the homes ranging widely in condition. Tenants own the trailers but pay $461 each month for the lot fee and water and trash pickup.
The number of tenants has diminished as the airport hasn’t allowed many new trailers into the park over the past 25 years, with the number of homes falling from 250 in 1995 to 77 today.
Airport Executive Director Mike Giardino said he’s shutting down the park for financial reasons.
“It’s just becoming unsustainable,” Giardino said. “And from a business perspective, it’s not bringing in the income. I don’t mean to make it that this is a great thing, obviously, for the people who live there. But we’re just closing the park. That’s the bottom line.”
The airport commission never voted on closing the park. Since the airport operates the trailer park directly, Giardino said, he was within his authority to move forward with the closure without board action. He also removed the trailer park from his recommended budget.
The board could in theory reverse that decision, he said, “but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
There are no plans in place to develop the site, Giardino said. The land is envisioned in the airport’s master plan as a “safety zone” for a third runway. But with few flights in and out of the airport these days, that could be a long way off.
Airport budget numbers show the trailer park turned a $156,000 profit in fiscal year 2021 — finishing the year better than projections. But things have gotten tighter in the current year. The numbers show that the airport has lost just over $15,000 on the park from July through March.
Giardino says airport maintenance staffers have spent plenty of time on band-aid fixes to the park’s aging infrastructure, such as leaking water lines. He said it would cost $1.5 million to properly fix a storm-water drainage issue that causes significant flooding after heavy rains, plus millions more for improvements to sewer systems, water lines and roadways.
Amy Prichard, 58, who’s lived in the park for 16 years, said there are clearly issues with the infrastructure — including when sewage from the rest of the neighborhood rose into her bathtub and sinks four years ago.
“They have broken pipes everywhere,” she said. “Which I understand that, but why didn’t they fix it? They’ve been collecting rent for how many years?”
Past airport leadership “enjoyed the park’s profit margin,” but never put money back into it, Giardino said. Moreover, he said, the Federal Aviation Administration would likely block the airport from investing millions into a trailer park that’s not in its approved master plan.
The eventual closure, he said, was inevitable.
“It’s not part of our mission,” Giardino said of running a trailer park. “There has to be a point in time when decisions are made and actions are taken. We’ve reached this time and place where we’re taking action.”
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Difficult to relocate
Park residents say they are being kicked out at a terrible time. In a down economy and a seller’s housing market, it’s a bad time to be looking for a new place to live.
They say the airport’s incentives to leave won’t come close to covering the thousands of dollars that they’d have to pay to have the trailers moved. Such moves, they say, can run more than $10,000.
“I feel sad because I don’t have enough money to move,” said Yahaira Martinez-Hernandez, 41, a single mother of four, as her eyes welled with tears. “I don’t have a place to go.”
Martinez-Hernandez, a native of Puerto Rico, said she works hard, and always paid her rent on time. “I mean, that’s not right,” she said of the airport’s decision.
Representatives from two other trailer parks left notes on residents’ mailboxes, saying a handful of spots are available. But current residents point out that many surrounding parks won’t accept aging trailers, no matter how well maintained. That’s a problem because many of the airport’s trailers appear to have been built in the 1980s.
Relocation assistance might be available from charitable organizations, with Giardino saying the airport will hold an event so the residents can speak with them.
“It’s unfortunate and a difficult circumstance,” Giardino said. “That’s why we reached out to all these agencies to help. Because we want to help them.”
Kim Lee, a spokeswoman for the city of Newport News, said the city’s Department of Human Services will work closely with the United Way and other organizations to help the displaced tenants.
“There could be some assistance with down payments or security deposits or things like that, but it all depends on what programs they qualify for,” Lee said.
Residents say they will miss the peaceful community they’ve cultivated over the years. Prichard has spent thousands of dollars to fix up her property, including the large planters and perennial flowers out front, and loves her quiet spot in a shady section of the park.
“I love the birds coming every day,” she said as she sat on her deck one recent morning drinking coffee and reading a Christian daily devotional book. “It hurts. Watching it all being treated like garbage is really hard to deal with.”
While most residents interviewed said they would stay at the park until November, one family said it will get out as soon as possible to avoid uncertainty.
Shannelle Coles, 44, doesn’t live in the trailer park, but spent about $20,000 to buy and fix up a trailer for her daughter and two grandsons a few years ago. They have felt welcomed in the neighborhood and have enjoyed being there.
The recent order to move out, Coles said, came as a shock. But she said she can’t have her family subjected to the stress of what’s happening.
But before her daughter moves out, Coles said she’s attempting to recoup at least some of the money she’s spent. She and her daughter, Le’-Shaun Coles, 23, were stripping out floor tiles this week, and plan to save the wood from a recently built deck.
“I’m going to strip the whole thing down,” she said. “I’m going to take everything that I can — the front door, the back door, all brand new. I can sell my flooring. Why not sell it so I can use that toward getting her something different?”
Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com
