Real Estate Developer Agrees To Kick In $5,200 Per Lot-Leasing Household To Ease Relocation Trauma For Booted Residents In Asheville Mobile Home Park; Clears Way For Construction Of 290-Unit Complex

In Asheville, North Carolina, the Citizen-Times reports:

• Maria Escobedo and her Lakeview Mobile Home Park neighbors already knew they’d be receiving some money to find new homes when they arrived at the Asheville City Council chambers on June 14.
  
  Nick Hathaway, partner and director of development at Hathaway Development in Atlanta, had promised them a total of $250,000 – though he had no legal requirement to donate any money.
  
  By the end of the council meeting that day, however, members of the more than 50 households that composed the wooded, tranquil community in South Asheville had learned Hathaway would be gifting them an additional $40,000.
  
  ***
  The more than 200 Lakeview residents, including about 65 children, received notices Jan. 31 that they would have to move by July 1, [...].
  
  Hathaway Development had bought the property on which the mobile home park sat. The company plans to build 290 apartments in a four-building complex, called Skyland Exchange, at 55 Miami Circle and 70 Allen Ave.
  
  Each household would receive $1,000 to assist with the transition, according to the notice. “We didn’t feel that was enough,” [attorney Susan] Chitwood said. “They were about to endure this huge trauma.”
  
  Plus, relocating a mobile home would cost an average of $11,200, according to research [...].
  
  ***
  Each household will receive about $5,273. Homeward Bound, an Asheville nonprofit organization that helps homeless people find places to live, is scheduled to disburse the money Aug. 1. [... T]he final settlement also included the stipulation that residents would not have to move until Aug. 31.
  
  Hathaway said he plans to have the apartment complex be ready for move-in by Halloween next year.

For the story, see Mobile home park residents get extra $40,000 to move (Generosity and morality prevailed where the law didn’t exist).