Problems at Siesta MHP persist

Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a new series examining living conditions at Siesta Mobile Home Park and residents’ organized efforts to talk to management about their grievances.

Last year, the Daily Record ran a series on the tenants’ association at Siesta Mobile Home Park and the progress the park residents made in getting the park owners and managers to address health and safety issues in the park. Progress was made: A large, open dumpster that had attracted rats to the park was removed, a few street lights were put in, part of the roadway through the park was repaved, and the managers stopped posting premature eviction notices on residents’ doors at the beginning of every month.

However, the tenants’ association and its members have lingering concerns.

Despite the upside-down sign, there is no on-site management.

Last February, the park was sold to a company called Mothership Propco. The park is now under the management of Strive Communities, which shares an address with Mothership Propco in Colorado. Both share the address to which Siesta’s utility bills have been sent — to the attention of Dave Reynolds, head of the company RV Horizons, which managed the park prior to its sale to Mothership.

Though the name of the management company might change, many of the issues at the park have resurfaced. There are potholes that residents say have caused damage to vehicles, trees need to be trimmed back to avoid damaging mobile homes and getting tangled in electrical lines, raw sewage leaks have recurred, and there is still no on-site management office at Siesta.

In addition, residents are concerned about the state of their mailboxes, some of which have no doors on them. There are also concerns about new regulations on the number of vehicles that can be parked at each home and rules that allow maintenance workers to remove any property from outside a residence that is deemed to be garbage and then charge the resident for removing it. Management is putting in two parking pads for each trailer, Dora said, with an option for a third pad if the resident pays for one (though if that resident leaves, they can’t take the parking pad with them). Residents’ water bills and even lot fees also seem to be erratic, based on data from utility and rent bills the Daily Record has seen.

“We’re in the same position we were in a year ago, I feel,” resident Dora said (members of the tenants’ association have asked that their last names be withheld for privacy reasons).

There are some repairs underway at the park — sewage leaks have been fixed, and management has said that road repaving will begin soon — but residents are also concerned about the pace of the work. For instance, paving equipment has been sitting at the park for several days, residents said.

Mold has grown on an outgoing mailbox.

A tenant named Dora B. said she feels like the owners have not acted enough.

“They’ve made too many promises,” she said.

The management is working to make repairs, according to Jayson Lipsey, chief operations officer for Strive Communities. In an email to the Daily Record dated March 26, Lipsey said, “We are planning fairly extensive road repairs to the community to improve conditions for our residents. Additionally, we will be adding parking pads for each home. We hope to begin work on this project today. Depending on weather conditions, we expect the work will take three to four weeks.”

Lipsey also said that Strive has been making sewer repairs at Siesta. City records show that a permit was issued March 19 for sewer repairs at the park.

Despite this work, the tenants’ association members remain skeptical of future improvements at the park.

“It’s basically the same thing we’ve been fighting over for two years,” Dora said.