Saginaw families pack up, leave park.

Byline: Jim Feehan The Register-Guard

SAGINAW - About 30 residents of the dilapidated Saginaw Mobile Home Park don't know where they're sleeping tonight.

The tenants faced a Sunday deadline to find somewhere else to live before Lane County officials move in today to close the 14-acre property, whose trustees have failed to get necessary building permits, fix the septic system or clean up the property.

"I guess you could say we're homeless for the holidays," said Michael Story, who's lived in the park for nine months. Story said he's stored his belongings at a friend's house and plans to pitch a tent beside a bike path.

On Sunday, he and other residents were hastily packing and loading pickups, vans, travel trailers and small cars in an attempt to be off the premises by today, when officials plan to erect a padlocked fence around the site.

Discarded appliances, children's toys and stripped cars littered the compound Sunday, and several abandoned cats wandered aimlessly looking for mobile homes that had since moved along.

The evictions are the latest chapter in a long-running saga of the county trying to get the property's owners to fix the park, on Highway 99 south of Creswell.

The park had about 85 residents living in 42 mobile homes and trailers as recently as 2001, though some people moved out after the county initially sought to evict them in early 2002.

Park owner Kent Olsen, though claiming the county's land use laws violated his property rights, nonetheless reached a mediated agreement to clean up the park in order to keep it open.

Olsen died in May. His heirs are now in charge of the park.

But the negotiated cleanup never happened, and in September a federal judge agreed to the county's request that the shutdown move forward.

No one claiming to be among the park's trustees was at the park Sunday.

The heirs now have until March 23 to clean up the park and make the required improvements, said Jeff Towery, manager of the county land management division. If they fail to do so, the county could clean up the property itself, or foreclose on the site and turn it over to a private party, he said.

County commissioners last week voted to provide $5,100 in general expense contingency money to help families at the park make the transition to alternative housing. But several tenants on Sunday said they haven't seen a dime and were told local agencies could provide them little more than a sleeping bag.

Ever since sheriff's deputies delivered eviction notices two months ago, looting has been rampant in the park, said manager Cindy Vriesman. "One owner came home to find everything in her mobile home ripped off, right down to the curtains," she said.

Vriesman, who's lived in the park with her husband, Jim, for nearly eight years, said she can scarcely believe her new reality.

"Right now I don't know where I'll be sleeping Monday night," she said. "This will be the first time in 30 years I will not have a place of my own to fix Thanksgiving dinner."

Vriesman spent much of the past two days trying to corral the park's cats. "I caught 16 cats yesterday and four this morning," she said. "I just can't see them freezing or starving to death."

Vriesman, who dropped off the animals at the Cottage Grove Humane Society, was busy setting live traps for the remaining homeless cats even as she packed frantically. She and her husband put their belongings in two travel trailers and said they plan to park them at relatives' homes.

One row over from the Vriesmans, Alvin and Carol McGeorge emptied the contents of their double-wide trailer into a Buick LeSabre. The couple said they've placed their belongings in a storage unit.

Carol McGeorge said the couple's 19-year-old son was checking with his apartment manager to see if the couple could bunk down with him for a week. "He said, `Mom, I can't stand to see you and dad out in the cold,' ' she said.

"If that falls through," said Alvin McGeorge, "we'll live out of our car until we get a place."

CAPTION(S):

As she packs, park manager Cindy Vriesman wonders aloud where she'll be sleeping tonight. She has lived in the park with her husband, Jim, for nearly eight years.