Displaced renters need options they can afford
With their faded paint, rusted awnings and cracked windows, the trailers at the Dallas Mobile Home Village on the West Side might not be much to look at.
But for the park’s roughly 100 residents, they’re home. Maybe not for long. The trailer park, off McKinley Avenue, would be demolished if a plan is approved to build apartments and a commercial complex on the site.
Perhaps that’s a better use for the land, but it’s certainly not better for the residents. They will be forced to find another place to live.
Given that some of them pay $300 a month to rent a trailer pad and $300 more if they also need to rent the trailer, they will be hardpressed to find another place for the same price.
“If I lose this place, I’ll be out on the street or in my truck,” said Steven Clark, 60, a former ironworker and roofer. He gets by on a $784-a-month disability check after heart trouble led to double-bypass surgery two years ago.
Clark pays $300 a month to rent the trailer pad. He bought the trailer for $500, fixed the plumbing and salvaged some discarded lawn chairs to make a home.
“This is the first place I’ve ever had on my own, outside of renting,” Clark told me. “This is the best place I’ve had in my life.”
When academics or advocates talk about gentrification or displacement, our minds picture low-income housing being demolished to make way for glitzy high-rises in hipster neighborhoods such as Italian Village. Some examples of that can be found, but it’s not the way this stuff usually happens.
Displacement is more likely to be found in scattered sites throughout central Ohio, as older rental
communities are replaced by newer (and much more expensive) ones, or as they are renovated to attract higher-paying tenants.
Such spots can be found on McKinley Avenue — or on High Street near Worthington. There, the Worthington Gardens Apartments are undergoing a top-to-bottom renovation. The remodel looks great, as a tired 1960s complex is brought into the 21st century.
But for residents, the renovation means something else: skyrocketing rents.
Until the renovation, Robert Carter paid $625 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. When he was told that rent in his updated unit would jump to $1,300, he had no choice but to leave. (A Worthington Gardens representative says one-bedroom apartments start at $990.)
“I can’t afford that much for an apartment,” said Carter, a 39-year-old retail worker who is blind.
Luckily for him, he found a town home nearby for $645 a month that he’s happy with, Steven Clark, 60, a disabled former ironworker and roofer, owns his trailer and rents the pad in the Dallas Mobile Home Village on the West Side. The trailer park might be replaced by a new development, which would force Clark to find another low-cost home.
even though it’s farther from the COTA bus lines he relies on.
But he was concerned enough about his experience that he recently pleaded his
case to the Columbus City Council.
“I would like to see more disabled or low-income housing come up,” he told me. “It seems like developers
are catering to young professionals who make $5,000 or $6,000 a month. That housing is going up everywhere, but I don’t see much for $700 or $800 a month.”
This isn’t about demonizing developers. They can’t be faulted for responding to the market. The McKinley Avenue and Worthington Gardens projects, and others like them, provide housing for hundreds of residents and typically improve the look of their neighborhoods.
But it’s also true that it’s a lot harder to find a $600-a-month apartment than it used to be (much less a $300-a-month place). It’s especially hard in safe, stable areas such as North High Street or McKinley Avenue and Trabue Road. Those apartments are vanishing much faster than low-income housing contractors can build them.
When 48 percent of renting Americans pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing (and almost 1 in 4 pay more than half of their income on housing), that’s a problem.
Just ask Steven Clark and Robert Carter.