Blog

Jul 22, 2023

I'm being evicted even though I own my tiny home

SOME home owners have learned that they can be evicted from their land at any moment. When a mobile home is bought, the purchaser gains ownership of the entire house. However, they do not own the land

SOME home owners have learned that they can be evicted from their land at any moment.

When a mobile home is bought, the purchaser gains ownership of the entire house. However, they do not own the land it sits on. They rent the space that their home sits on.

This means anyone who buys the plot of land can force the tiny home owners to pay a higher rent or evict them with short notice.

Alondra Ruiz Vazquez and her husband own a tiny home in Phoenix, Arizona. It sits right next to Grand Canyon University.

Her neighbors have owned their homes for decades, and none of them thought they could be forced to leave.

"When we bought the place, we thought it was never going to be taken away from us. We were thinking we're going to be here many, many years," Vazquez said to AJ+.

However, when GCU bought the plot of land their mobile home park sits on in 2016, the threat of eviction began to loom.

Even though the park was under new ownership for six and a half years, residents weren't served an eviction notice until April of 2022.

Many residents don't know where they will be able to move to without receiving government assistance. Others thought they would end up homeless.

For Vazquez, not only was she losing her home, but also her community. She is a bright light within the Periwinkle community.

Vazquez and her husband run a volunteer soccer club for refugee children. When those children's parents found themselves evicted or on the streets, Vazquez had a place to house them. Now, they will have nowhere to go.

Grand Canyon University made it known that they will do everything in their power to ease the moving process for tenants while also meeting their demands.

"GCU acquired the property 6 ½ years ago, announcing at that time that it would be used for future campus expansion. The University did not raise the rent during that entire time and waited as long as it could to expand the campus into that location," the university said in a 2022 statement.

"Now, with the need to expand, the University has raised funds to provide multiple layers of assistance to tenants at Periwinkle."

Among the assistance the university provided was free rent for the final months before eviction, $10,000 in funds for relocation and household goods, coverage of the relocation of an owner's tiny home, and repairs for the tiny homes.

The eviction date passed at the end of May 2023, but tenants who had not found a new place to live were not kicked out immediately if they had nowhere to go.

It is unclear if or where Vazquez and her family found a new home.