Residents In Dilapidated Mobile Home Park In Foreclosure Threatened With Immediate Boot Over Unpaid Water Bill

In Jacksonville, Florida, The Florida Times Union reports:

• Among the dozens of ravaged homes, trash piles and overflowing sewage in a once thriving Jacksonville neighborhood stand eerie monuments to a time when the streets bustled with people. [...] About 40 people, a quarter of them children, still live in the Westport Mobile Home Park on 103rd Street near Interstate 295. The JEA plans to cut water and sewer service Monday over the owners’ delinquent $4,800 account, JEA records show. The JEA told residents last week the park will then be considered uninhabitable. The city can seek to have them removed within 30 days over safety issues.

• Poverty-sticken residents wept when asked about their future. Some vowed to stay and fight, despite being circled by squalor. Those who own their homes can’t move them because the structures are too old.

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• The park’s owners, including St. Augustine businessman Farid Ashdji, have faced foreclosure since May 2009 after being cited for owing $1.3 million, court records show. [...] The city has cited the owners for safety and code violations and condemned dozens of properties stripped by vandals. The owners have not responded and face fines, said Renee Brust, a city spokeswoman. Brust said the city does not relocate people but can offer temporary assistance to residents who seek help.

For more, see Jacksonville residents to lose neighborhood ('It may not look like much, but it’s a home for my babies’).

For story update, see Residents of Jacksonville mobile home park get some time (Families at the Westport Mobile Home Park faced losing water and sewer service Monday; future remains uncertain):

• About 40 people living in a nearly destroyed Jacksonville mobile home park got a break in plans to have their water and sewer service cut next week when the owners paid a delinquent $4,800 JEA bill late [Friday] afternoon.