PHOENIX (CN) — A man stood on the porch in front of a beige mobile home. He wore a thick green jacket and gray cotton shorts, his legs shivering in the chilly wind.
“I’m 84 years old,” Gerry Suter said. “I take 13 different pills just to stay alive. If I’m out on the street, I won’t stay alive.
“I’m sure hoping God calls me before May, because I’m not gonna die on the fucking street like a piece of trash,” he growled, crying as he chokes out the words.
A large, multicolored apartment building looms in the background. Two more are going up across the street. Bright blue ribbons mark palm trees lining the driveway between properties in Periwinkle Mobile Home Park. Suter said those are the trees that “they” will be cutting down.
An hour later, Alondra Ruiz Vazquez parked her blue sedan in the mobile home across from his and walked over. She wore a pink sweatsuit and a dark jacket over it.
“Hi Gerry,” she said. “How are you?”
He told her about his doctor’s appointment the next day, and she offered to drive. She went back to her home and returned with a blanket which she wrapped around Suter’s legs. They stopped shivering.
“This is community,” Ruiz Vazquez said.
On May 28, that community may no longer exist.
The apartment buildings across the street from Periwinkle belong to Grand Canyon University, the largest Christian university in the nation. Soon the university will use the land on the corner of Colter Street and 27th Avenue for another apartment.
The university bought the land for $3.4 million in 2016, intending to use it for future campus expansion. But residents of the 4.7-acre, 61-space mobile home park say they weren’t officially told they’d have to leave until last year.
Jamie, who’s lived in Periwinkle with her boyfriend for 10 years, said they first learned they’d have to move on June 1, 2022, when GCU lawyers met with residents to tell them to be out by October. Others said they received eviction letters in May.
“They could have told us multiple times,” she said. “They just refused to.” Jamie declined to give her last name.
The October exodus was postponed to the end of May so children could finish the school year. But for the low-income families living there, the extra few months haven’t made things easier.
“It’s not a good situation,” Jamie said. “I make about $1,000 off Social Security and that’s not enough to live on. I don’t have a place to go.”
Periwinkle residents pay between $300 and $500 in rent. Since GCU hasn’t raised the rent since its 2016 purchase, most other low-income housing no longer compares to Periwinkle’s prices. The most affordable in the area range from $550 to $800 per month, said Michael Trailor, president and CEO of the Arizona-based nonprofit mortgage banker Trellis.
Suter has lived in Periwinkle for 29 years.
“I figured it’d be the last place in my life that I live, and they tell me I just gotta get the hell out,” the Air Force veteran said. “I don’t matter to them or anybody else.”
He said he’s tried to find other mobile home parks in Phoenix but hasn’t found an open spot — only spots with existing mobile homes, which he can’t afford. And even if there are spots available, Suter’s mobile home, like many in the park, is too old to be moved. Mobile homes built before 1976 don’t meet certain safety standards needed to transport them.
