Five years ago, facing significant rent increases and, in some cases, eviction, residents at the North Lamar Mobile Home Park organized. Now, they own the park.
By Megan Kimble
June 3, 2020
Roberto Sanchez brandishes a flashlight as he walks along the narrow street that loops through the North Lamar Mobile Home Park, a community of 68 homes tucked in the shadow of U.S. Highway 183 on Austin’s north side. It’s a Tuesday evening in late August, the summer sky still bright and clear. Overgrown trees crowd above the colorful trailers—peach, lime green, bright white—arranged neatly behind slatted wood fences and ceramic planters. But as night falls, Sanchez says, the street will become pitch black as residents return from their jobs building houses or busing tables—none of the streetlights work.
Sanchez leads a group of 40 residents and a dozen activists and journalists through the mobile home park on the Tour of Negligence and Neglect, the latest in a series of protests organized by the North Lamar Residents Association (known as ARNL, Asociación de Residentes de North Lamar). Uncollected trash spills into the street from an overflowing dumpster, attracting rats to nearby trailers.
