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Elderly Filipino-Americans fight to keep Carson mobile homes

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Steve Angeles | TFC News Los Angeles

<figure class="op-interactive"><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/33pwhcL5Ygs?enablejsapi=1" width="560"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more News on <a href="https://www.iwanttfc.com/#!/browse/Genres/News/tag_id_genres/id_news" target="_blank">iWantTFC</a></div>Elderly Filipino residents in Carson City, California are fighting to keep their homes and their communities intact from rapid development.In recent years, several mobile homes in Carson and in nearby cities have been sold off by their owners, plowed down, and turned into high-rise luxury apartments.This has left residents, many of them elderly and with disabilities, without access to affordable housing.&quot;We don&#x27;t want to be homeless,&quot; said mobile park resident Anna Saycon. &quot;We are senior citizens. We need to stay.&quot;The usual cost of rent for mobile homes is usually around $600 a month. But the luxury apartments that took their place cost more than triple that amount, at about $2,000 a month.While residents are offered incentives and payouts to move out, they said it is below their market value, and often, are not enough to uproot, especially in a housing market as costly as Southern California&#x27;s.&quot;It&#x27;s kind of scary to be out of place,&quot; said another mobile home park resident, Phil Dumbrique. &quot;This is unreasonable. I&#x27;m 80 years old already.&quot;The Carson City Council has passed an ordinance to protect residents from unfair mobile home evictions and regulate the process of sales of mobile home parks.Other Filipino residents also came out to support the tenants.&quot;They cannot afford to pay or to move,&quot; said Mia San Andres. &quot;We have the guts to go around and call [for] their attention.&quot;The city is also in the process of creating districts that would create overlay zones where only mobile parks would be allowed.If park owners plan to sell their properties, developers would have to build affordable low-cost housing to replace the mobile homes.

The elderly residents are up in arms to keep their mobile homes amid the threat of eviction to make way for redevelopment.