Dozens to be evicted as mobile home park is redeveloped
Sep 23, 2021, 7:31 PM | Updated: 7:34 pm
LAYTON, Utah — Layton City has not received plans yet, but the owners of a mobile home park reportedly want to put in a combination of businesses and apartments. This change will force residents out of their homes.
Some of that could start happening by next spring.
Many homeowners at the Cedarwood Mobile Home park never wanted to stay forever.
“My whole plan was to renovate and remodel,” Renieka Ragas said. “Kind of live a little comfortable for a little while and then maybe move on to something else later in life — but not this soon.”
Ragas only moved here in April 2020.
She’s put thousands into fixing her home up, only to get this notice earlier this month.
“If I would have known that this park would be closing in a year I would have moved somewhere else,” she said. “I could have invested someplace else.”
She has about eighteen months to figure it out. But just down the road Nikkole Malan, only has until March first.
“(It’s) difficult to find housing right now,” Malan said. “The housing market is really high.”
Malan moved here in 2014 and put money into renovations, too. But like many of the homes here, hers is too old to be moved as is, since it’s not up to current codes.
“I probably would have declined the purchase and put my money elsewhere,” she said. “Into something else rather than spend seven and a half years here to walk away with nothing.”
For many like Malan and Ragas, the housing cost here hovers below five-hundred dollars. Rent elsewhere could easily triple that.
“I don’t want to rent,” Ragas said. “This was an option to get on my feet and get ahead.”
As part of Layton’s downtown redevelopment plans this area was re-zoned for mixed use, transit-oriented development, back in 2007.
KSL TV has reached out to the owners of Cedarwood Mobile Home Park with no response at this time.
