There are no official statistics on park age. Al Hesselbart, a historian of manufactured housing and recreational vehicles, estimates that about half of Florida's mobile home parks are more than 30 years old. He added that many of them would not be candidates for redevelopment.
Larry Shaffer, 52, a retired Navy chief warrant officer, moved to Gulfstream in 1997, when his previous trailer park, near Tampa, was closed to make room for a Home Depot.
When the Mauros announced in February that they were selling the park, Shaffer and others began meeting in the home of Emil Kuhn, a retired veterinarian who has spent winters in the park since 1986. Though they did not have an active homeowners association, they found documents they say show that a homeowners organization had incorporated in 1982 and never disbanded.
Shaffer said the residents would have no trouble raising the money to buy the park -- roughly US$50,000 per homeowner -- and that mortgage and maintenance payments would not be much more than their current rents. The residents of a nearby trailer park, Lion's Lair, recently brought a successful suit to buy their property.
Even if the Gulfstream tenants' suit is successful, it will do little to ease the crunch for affordable housing in the Keys, said Debbie Love, president of the Middle Keys Community Land Trust, a nonprofit group formed to create and preserve affordable housing. Changes in state regulations have made it easier and cheaper for owners to evict tenants and redevelop trailer parks.
But she said public sentiment was starting to shift. Shaffer, motivated by his experience at Gulfstream, said he was resigning from the homeowners' board to run for city council, saying he wants to protect other parks. "I've been alone in the woods crying about this for years," Love said. "All of the sudden, a light has switched on."
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