NJ TRAILER PARK RESIDENTS FIGHT EVICTION AND WIN

NJ TRAILER PARK RESIDENTS

FIGHT EVICTION AND WIN

by Matt Hoke

When Carol Lynn trailer park resident Al Ripa received a letter in the mail kicking him off his land, it didn’t surprise him. Ripa had never received as much as a friendly word or even a notice in the mail from his landlord Anthony Saduk in over sixteen years of living at Carol Lynn. But to other residents of the southern New Jersey trailer park, the letter was completely unexpected – one old woman suffered a heart attack upon reading.

Technically they weren’t eviction notices, but they might as well have been. Carol Lynn Resort had been advertised in 1978 as the only year-round trailer park in the area, which by the letter of the law was false advertising. For whatever reason, Carol Lynn exists in a legal limbo. On paper it is a seasonal resort, but with the petty requirement that for three months out of the year, residents would have to take a week-long vacation. In practice, Carol Lynn “Resort” is home to about three hundred permanent households, consisting mainly of disabled senior citizens and low-income workers.

The letters sent out to the residents in July informed them that New Jersey State Department of Community Affairs (DCA) now designated the wiring in certain trailers as a fire safety issue if inhabited permanently. Landlord Saduk, also a member of the Woodbine city council, informed the residents that he intended to enforce these regulations, and that as of November 1^st, 2009 the water would be shut off and the front gate would be locked. Throughout the course of the affair Saduk hid behind the idea that these had apparently been the rules all along, even if he had happened not to enforce them. Low-income and disabled people who had been living on the site for over a decade were surprised to learn that they suddenly lived on a seasonal resort. Without the money to get up and go, living in trailers not built to be easily moved, the notices were practically a death sentence to some residents. One Tennessee woman had sold her home and moved to Carol Lynn believing it was a year-round site just before summer. Some residents curiously observed that Carol Lynn seemed to be the only site in the state where these regulations were being actually enforced.

Realistically, some changes in the management staff and market conditions allowed owner Saduk to attempt a land grab, forcing the impoverished residents of Carol Lynn off of their sites while real estate was selling hot. Resident and informal leader of the fight-back, Al Ripa, calculated that Saduk could have made more than $45 million from the maneuver. Heavy construction equipment loomed ominously around the park, ready for renovations.

Al Ripa, a retired US Marine and senior citizen, wasn’t about to roll over and take it. Though he had the money to move and had been meaning to head for Florida anyway, Ripa couldn’t stomach the idea of walking away and letting it slide. He was concerned for his friends who physically and financially simply could not move. He said, “What if I threw my dogs out on the street? They’d arrest me for animal abuse. That’s exactly what he’s doing to these senior citizens.” Besides, the evictions were just one more example of trends he had witnessed for years:

They’re a bunch of high-class society suckers who don’t give a damn about working people. All the rich people in this country forget they wouldn’t have all that money if not for working people. We should fire ‘em all from their positions and replace them with workers.

They never have the money for what you want…but when they need to put a building up, or a pay raise, there’s money.

I’m not anti-American, but I’m scared of this government. You never know if one day they’re gonna just come in here and throw you on the street…There’s gonna be a war in this country.

But Ripa, a Marine, was ready for that. The day the notices came out, he began going door to door with plans to crash the next Woodbine city council meeting. Most residents instantly agreed. Some began going door to door with the news themselves. A few sighed and warned Ripa that he was wasting his time and there was probably nothing that could be done about it – mainly those for whom Carol Lynn was only a vacation home.

Within two days the entire trailer park had gone from despair and outrage to a determined anger. Ripa’s trailer became the movement’s headquarters, a buzzing hive of visitors constantly coming and going with ideas about what to do, questions, doubts. Ripa said that a handful of residents half-jokingly named him “the mayor.”

When the city council meeting came on July 17, the air was thick with tension as well more than fifty furious residents packed the usually dull and empty chamber. As if trying to spark the gasoline, landlord and councilman Anthony Saduk opened the public comment session by saying that he could not comment on any discussion related to the trailer park. This was followed by an immediate outburst from the gallery.

The meeting consisted of resident after resident taking their turn on the floor, verbally pounding Saduk for his cruelty and greed while the councilors fidgeted over their relatively light security. Cameras flashed and journalists from local papers jotted down quotes from the torrent of anger. Each resident’s tirade was fueled by Saduk’s arrogance in unconditionally refusing to even speak to the people whom he was trying to destroy, first at the trailer park and now in public.

The mayor of Woodbine, NJ William Pikolycky made the sad mistake of going to bat for the landlord who had excused himself from the conversation on cheap legalistic grounds. At the end, the caucasian Saduk said the meeting was a “lynch mob.” When asked about that comment, Ripa smiled, shrugged and nodded. It was hard to blame him.

Over the intervening weeks Ripa had several phone conversations of similar tone with state officials, including the state Department of Community Affairs chief Joseph Doria. He warned them, “Don’t you know that this is on YouTube?” He reminded them that election season was coming, and that via the internet, friends and relatives as far away as Canada and the west coast knew about the situation.

In a bizarre stroke of fate, news swept New Jersey shortly thereafter that police had rounded up forty-four people in a corruption sting, involving mayors taking bribes, laundering money, and even selling kidneys. NJ Governor Jon Corzine asked Doria to resign behind the scenes. Doria complied. This of course does not prove that Doria may have been taking money from landlords in order to write regulations that could help them evict their stubborn tenants – but it sure doesn’t help the suspicion. Widespread acknowledgement that New Jersey politicians are for brazenly sale also happens to make getting the rules re-written a little easier.

The next gathering to crash was at the office of Democratic NJ state senator Jeff Van Drew. He had pledged to help out the situation. The faces of the crowd set the mood – Van Drew had better come through with something and not try to justify the inhumane rules, or else he would have to face the wrath of the residents as well. After ominously trickling in group by group on the hot, muggy day, about eighty people had gathered to see what this man who claimed to be on their side would say and do. After being told by the county government to “get a lawyer,” they had reason to be skeptical. Some of them were wearing uniforms from low-paying jobs. Many of them leaned on canes, walkers, sat in wheelchairs. A shaded pavilion was reserved for those who needed it. The eighty present stood for more who were too disabled to attend or were asleep after their long night shifts.

Van Drew said that with Joseph Doria’s resignation, the DCA was pliant to popular demands. He had also done some research, and learned (completely coincidentally at this moment of rage and publicity reaching a critical mass) that it was really up to the municipalities to define the regulations for seasonal sites. The Woodbine mayor also happened to be there to announce that Woodbine regulations would now revert to the old rules, which effectively made Carol Lynn a year-round trailer park once again.

A few questions were asked in order to clarify the legalese. There was a moment of suspense as the residents wondered – could it really be? – if at the bottom of all the doublespeak was the fact that they could stay in their precious homes. As the questions were answered, they realized that yes, they were not being thrown onto the streets.

Across the yard swept a breath of relief. As Van Drew’s speech ended, one by one people began turning to each other and talking. Every other conversation started off with one person saying: “Well, we actually won.” A few were crying.

One keen-minded resident said that this was good but it wasn’t over yet. When asked why, he said “Saduk is vindictive, he’s retaliatory…he wants his money.” He then went from person to person spreading the idea of a tenant’s union.

At first Senator Van Drew appeared to be playing the role of people’s champion. That may have even been his intention in his own mind. Either way, he also played the role of damage control for a state government and status quo whose legitimacy is reeling in the face of corruption scandals. He addressed the crowd like he was scolding a wild animal out of its temper tantrum, as if their anger was somehow inappropriate. He said “don’t lash out at the people who are trying to help you.” Nobody had been lashing out at Van Drew himself, so what exactly was Van Drew trying to protect other than faith in a system that almost destroyed the lives of the Carol Lynn residents? Who were these invisible helpers that the residents had offended? Almost nobody of status had taken their side. The Woodbine mayor, likewise, was not a consistent populist. He defended and even spoke for landlord Saduk in the beginning and obviously only caved under the withering mass anger and growing publicity.

In mid-August the residents voted to create a chapter of the New Jersey Tenant’s Organization in order to take on other grievances which had been collecting and building over time. Not least of the complaints is a $700 increase in maintenance fees in the course of one year (with maintenance often not done), which some residents believe is also part of Saduk’s plan to clear people out. A few residents have also faced harassment, such as one who was told that his shed was two feet in height over regulation – and then after working on it was told that it was still two inches too tall and that the owner had to reduce it in two days or be evicted.

But all in all, the people of the trailer park stood their ground. The threatening construction machines disappeared. Those who seemed on the surface to be the most powerless people in Cape May County, New Jersey flipped the situation around, denying the will of a landlord politician and contradicting the New Jersey state government itself.

With Democratic representatives giving up ground in the healthcare and same-sex marriage debates faster than you can say “white flag,” people are finding that if they want to be treated right, they will not be able to rely on the leadership of politicians. But this is not a recipe for despair. The residents of Carol Lynn have led the way and showed us all that if we take a hard line, organize ourselves independently and stand up, we will win. Ripa kept this foremost in his mind during the whole struggle, and wants the world to know what the residents’ victory means:

I been saying for years, we got to stand up, we got to take it back, and it’s not gonna take one or two people. If it was one or two people they’d laugh at you, ignore you. But this is an example of lots of people getting together and making it happen.