"It looks like something out of a zombie movie."
On a Friday afternoon earlier this month, Marisol Sánchez dropped to her knees and sobbed outside the Sweetwater trailer that she and her late husband, Diego Valdes, once called home. The front door was broken down, some windows smashed — the place had been ransacked.
Six weeks earlier, Sánchez, 55, had left behind the trailer in the Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park. In November, the property owner announced the park would be closing to make way for a new affordable housing complex and offered residents a $14,000 buyout if they left by Jan. 31.
About 15% of Sweetwater’s population, roughly 3,000 people, lived in Li’l Abner at the start of the new year. It has since become a ghost town. Only 250 of the park’s 900 households remain.
They’ve rebuked the ownership’s buyout offers and are staging a legal battle against the terms of their eviction, currently set for May 19.
Read more at the Miami Herald