Florida City hires law firm to proceed with mass evictions
Florida City’s elected commission voted Tuesday night to hire a Coral Gables law firm to represent the town against a lawsuit filed by about 70 residents facing eviction from a city-owned trailer park.
On March 17, a Miami-Dade circuit court judge granted the residents of the Florida City Camp Site and RV Park a temporary victory when he issued an injunction on the same day of the city’s planned evictions. But Mayor Otis Wallace made it clear the 15-acre property would ultimately have to be empty of its tenants and trailers.
He said the city’s in the final stages of closing a contract with a Miami developer, the Treo Group, to sell the property for $6.8 million, and that deal has been in the works since 2019. Since then, he asserted that he’s told residents to start looking for another place to live.
“This is no secret,” Wallace said during Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s way out in the sunshine.”
Judge Alan Fine, however, wrote in his injunction last week that the city broke the law by sending a March 11 letter to tenants, which told them they had just days to clear out.
“Neither the city nor the purported purchaser have provided the Florida-statutory or county-required notices, nor have they afforded the plaintiff and those tenants similarly situated to her due process and rights provided to them by county and Florida law,” Fine wrote.
An anonymous donor hired attorneys to represent the residents of the low-income trailer neighborhood following a Miami Herald article published earlier this month detailing their plight.
Representatives from the Treo Group have not returned repeated calls requesting comment on the property. It is listed on the company’s website under its “portfolio” with an artist’s depiction, calling the project “Treo Crossings.” Wallace said the plans are for it to be used as a mixed-use residential/retail complex with market-rate rental apartments.
Wallace contended Tuesday that he gave the residents sufficient notice, noting that he held meetings with them in August to once again make clear the property would be sold soon. The city also sent a letter to tenants in November reiterating that the deal with Treo Group was moving forward. However, that letter also stated the city was giving them “as much time as possible” to find new homes.
This was the last official communication on the matter between the city and residents until the March 11 letter mandating the lot be empty by March 17.
Community activist Carmen Tejada does not live at Florida City Camp Site, but has been working with tenants for months in their efforts to keep their homes. She acted as the residents’ spokesperson at the commission meeting.
Tejada said the March 11 letter has put a tremendous amount of stress on residents, most of whom are very poor. Many are elderly and have debilitating physical and mental health issues. Additionally, there are several families with young children living there. One thing most have in common is they’ve lived at the trailer park for years, if not decades, paying no more than $480 a month for rent and utilities.
They can’t just pick up and go, Tejada added.
“These guys have been here for 20 years, and to get a letter that says get out in six days or you’re going to have legal repercussions is totally unfair and inhumane to do that to them,” Tejada told Wallace. “We’ve had two strokes and a suicide since this started. It’s horrible. It’s sad.”
But Wallace and three of the four commissioners present at Tuesday’s meeting voted to fight Fine’s injunction and to hire the law firm of Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton to represent the city.
Wallace said the city stopped collecting rent from trailer park’s residents in January to bolster the message they had to leave. However, that decision left the city responsible for paying all the utilities, which he said costs taxpayers $25,000 a month.
“It’s not really free. Somebody else is paying 25 grand a month while they run their air conditioning, your electricity, your water and everything else,” Wallace said.
Outside of the commission meeting, Tejada told residents not to believe the city was doing them any favors by not immediately kicking them out while keeping the water and electric on. She noted the city has owned the property since the 1980s and has done nothing to keep it from falling apart.
“You guys have sewer lines that are held together with broom sticks and duct tape,” she said.
