A mostly empty mobile home and RV park in Bonita Springs is starting to show signs of life after a steady line of RVs rolled into the park recently.
This isn’t just a seasonal change where an influx or residents flee northern states and escape to Southwest Florida for the winter.
Money is driving this change and it saddens those that rented here for so many years.
John Potts sits in his newly purchased camper and stares across the street at the remaining rubble that was his home for so many years at the Gulf Coast Camping Resort just off U.S.41 about one-and-a-half miles south of Coconut Point mall.
It’s hard enough that the owner of the park had Potts’s model home bulldozed after he chased the 81-year-old off the property he rented for years.
Now a land-owner himself, Potts still can’t shake how his life, and the lives of perhaps hundreds of others, were upended in the name of helping those displaced by Hurricane Ian.
New RVs started rolling into the park on Saturday.
More came Sunday.
It’s unclear when victims of the monstrous Category 4 hurricane will be able move in.
One person I’ve been speaking too said a manager told her the trailers were coming last weekend and that it would take a little time before she could move in.
“They started coming in Saturday and they brought them in yesterday,” said Potts. He said he last counted 14 trailers. “And today it slowed down I think because of the electrical system.”
People like Potts thought for sure new park owner Ralph Principe was clearing the park of renters to make way for FEMA trailers. FEMA had been out to survey the park about the time the renters were told they were no longer welcome.
But FEMA tells us in writing it has no deal with Principe or anyone associated with the park. It’s now state program trailers that are being set up at the property. Regardless, if it’s state or federally funded, it’s expected to be a financial windfall for the new owner.
Mike Harless spent the past eight years living at the park. Before a steep rate hike in November when Principe took over, Harless was paying $700 a month to rent the land and sewer hook-ups.
His trailer was too old to move off the rented lot and so he left it there when he was forced to move away. He heard about the government trailers.
“How come they displace some people just to put them in,” asked Harless. “They didn’t need to displace us to put them in because there was a bunch of vacant lots.”
When WGCU first reported this story, in December 2022, about 80 of the 260 lots were owned out-right and the rest were rented year-around or seasonally.
It’s not immediately clear how many state-funded trailers will end up at the park.
Principe has not returned a phone call seeking comment. We are also waiting to hear from the state. Last week we asked the for the number of state-funded trailers that were headed to the park.
We also asked to see the contract to see how much the park stands to make. We will update this story when we get the data.
The soon-to-be recipient asked that we don’t use her name because she’s afraid the deal may fall through if she speaks publicly.
She applied for temporary housing from both FEMA and more recently the state when Gov. Ron DeSantis announced in early December that the state would be providing temporary trailers because of all the gridlock in getting federally-backed trailers.
The woman was delighted to hear she’d be getting a government-backed travel trailer so she went on-line to learn more about her soon-to-be temporary home.
She didn’t like what she was reading which included WGCU’s stories about the residents being displaced as well as the bad reviews from residents who were getting kicked out.
She said she felt awful and wished there was a way for her to have a temporary home without displacing so many people.
“I was really conflicted. But what am I to do? I’m pretty much homeless,” the woman said.
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