Comment Collection: Jackson Park Statements at Borough Assembly Meeting

Kayla Desroches/KMXT
 
Thursday night, Jackson Mobile Home Park residents filled the Borough Assembly work session. Many say they just found out the park would be closing. Here are some of the comments from citizens who stepped up to speak.

“I went to the mailboxes the other day to check my mail and I counted every single mail box that there was. There’s 113 mailboxes. If each trailer only has one person residing in it, there are 113 people that are now replaced. We have no place to go.”

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“We don’t find out this matter to yesterday in the newspaper, we have 360 days to move it out. How can we move it? How can we afford to move that? I hope with your help, you’ll step in if possible.”

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“Basically I’m gonna be homeless in a year. I’m gonna rip everything I can salvage out of my trailer, load it in the back of my truck and, I don’t know, go out to Gibson Cove and put up a shack. Because there are houses to rent, 1,500 dollars a month. I mean, a lot of people can’t afford that.”

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“What concerned me is I read the list that the buyer said the reason why he was not keeping it a trailer park. Every item on there is a result of mismanagement. It has nothing to do with the hard-working owners of that trailer park – the ones of us that pay our rent when it’s due, those of us that are decent citizens and don’t do drugs and throw garbage out in our yard. That try to be good neighbors to each other. We’re the ones being punished for all those years of mismanagement that they say they can’t afford to keep it a trailer park.”

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“You’re talking about whole units of families. Where are they gonna go? It’s gonna land on the borough and it’s gonna land on the city. Brother Francis Shelter has no room. The Salvation Army has already too many people. They can’t help any more people.  What is the city and borough going to do?”

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“I just want to voice my opinion in asking you guys for help, whatever it is that you guys can do because of the fact that our community – I love Kodiak with my heart. It’s an awesome community. And I just don’t want to walk around and see all of these faces, all of these people and their mothers and fathers and kids being homeless. Jobs here are already hard to find. And homes, to add onto that, homes. That’s insane.”

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“You know unless we can figure something out and maybe open up a piece of land and put the trailers that the homeowners have and take it from there and make a profit off of that and we can keep it clean. Because I don’t even see the State Troopers making local runs through there. Regular runs. That’s why it got so infested, because they weren’t patrolling frequently, and that’s their jurisdiction and the only time they come is when they get a call and they come two or three at a pop, and you don’t see them for two or three weeks as far as I know. And there’s a lot of good families and a lot of good people that are living there.”