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Pink Citrus trailer park possibly threatened with closure

By Staff | Dec 28, 2010

The possible closing of Pink Citrus trailer park in Bokeelia could affect more than 100 residents.

Having been cited with a faulty wastewater package facility, the owners recently were informed to either have the system brought into compliance or face closure of the park.

One of the biggest questions on the minds of the park residents, as well as other islanders, is where are all of these families going to go and how are they going to get there.

The first group to address this situation is the Pine Island Long Term Recovery Organization.

“We have been able to assemble nearly the same group who dealt with the temporary re-location of many of the residents whose homes suffered serious damage after Hurricane Charley. Many of these same people have been involved in similar situations facing the families of Pink Citrus over the last several years,” said Betsy Haesemeyer, president of PILTRO. “While this is not yet a panic situation it certainly is a critical one as most of these families are low-income and locating proper housing may have to be done with a household by household evaluation.”

On Tuesday of last week, the group met at the offices of Pine Island Growers in Bokeelia to plot a course of action. Present for the brainstorming session were Patricia Howell, Ann Arnall and Kim Hustad from the Department of Human Services, Linda Pankow from the United Way 211 and Haesemeyer.

“This is a million dollar problem and it looks to us like there is no option for those residents to stay on the property,” said Hustad. “The biggest problem will be funding and at this time, funding is virtually unavailable to help the residents with moving expenses like first and last month’s rent or security deposits. No one entity can afford to foot the bill and other options will need to be explored.”

One of the options discussed by the group was to provide affordable housing on land provided by some of the farmers on the island.

“Many of the people who will have to relocate are farmworkers and without them, many of us will have a problem keeping our businesses going,” said Haesemeyer. “I believe we have the space if other growers are willing to allow a couple of trailers to be placed on their property to house the majority of these people, but this can’t happen without approval from the county. My big fear is if these people are forced to move away, we will lose a lot of our farmworker labor force as well as those who are employed by the service industry on the island.”

At this point is it unclear as to how long it may be if or when Pink Citrus will have to be vacated. Some authorities say it can be as soon as two months or as far away as a year from now depending on what action the DEP plans to pursue.

The group determined that the first course of action would be a door-to-door assessment of the residents of Pink Citrus.

“The things we need to know are, who is living in each of the 101 dwellings on the property, what they can afford to pay for housing and how they get to and from their jobs,” Haesemeyer said. “I know many of my employees don’t drive and rely on bicycles for transportation. If they move off the island they will have no way to get to work and this also will need to be considered.”

According to Haesemeyer, the Beacon of HOPE recently acquired a bus to provide transportation on the island for those who need it, but at this time they do not have the funding to pay a driver.

The door-to-door assessment is tentatively slated to take place on Jan. 11, and will be conducted by scribes accompanied by translators. Once this information is collected, it can best be determined who can afford to move off island yet still come back to their jobs and those who cannot.

In addition, the group will look into applying for grants or other resources to financially assist those who will need to seek other housing when or if the Pink Citrus property does not come into compliance prior to any deadline set by the DEP.

Neither the owners of Pink Citrus nor the park manager could be reached for comment. Calls to the company that owns the park were not returned by press time.