55+ Mobile Home Community/Co-Op In Foreclosure Leaves 250 Elderly Residents In Fear Of Boot; Some May Have Nowhere To Go

In Deerfield Beach, Florida the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports:

• The Tidewater Estates mobile home park in Deerfield Beach is facing foreclosure, and the roughly 250 residents fear for their future. "There are mornings I'll just cry because I think, 'What's going to happen?'" said Bonnie Alexander, 69. "We don't know where we're going to go."



• The 55-and-over community, near Hillsboro Boulevard and Military Trail, is a close-knit group that holds pool parties, shuffleboard contests and weekly Bingo and poker games. When Tidewater Estates' owner announced plans to sell to a developer in 2005, residents scrambled to form a co-op and take out mortgages to buy the park for $11.3 million. By 2009, though, the co-op struggled to keep up with the $60,000 monthly payments and defaulted on the loan the following year.

***

• Ginny Schriner said the co-op wants to pay back the mortgage debt, but it needs the bank to work with the residents through a difficult period. "We all grew up in an era where if we gave our word, we would take care of it," said Schriner, 72. "We don't want to walk away from the mortgage. We all feel that way."



• Madelyn Martin, 95, has lived at Tidewater since 1995. If the bank forecloses on the park, she said she'd have to live with family members, even though she prefers to remain independent.



• "You don't want to live off your kids," said Anna McAnespie, 66, another longtime resident. Roney Alexander, Bonnie's 71-year-old husband, said he doesn't understand why more lenders aren't working with struggling homeowners when taxpayer money helped stabilize the banking industry during the financial crisis of 2008. "We bailed their butts out," he said. "When we get in trouble, who bails us out?"

For the story, see Foreclosure arouses fear in mobile home park residents.