CinemaSerf
There’s something anachronistic about the fact that many of the residents of a trailer park in Florida are being evicted by a Christian broadcasting network. When I say trailer park, these Floridians are not the kind of drug-fuelled and violent hoodlums that you might imagine might live there. Indeed most of them maintain their properties well and have lived there for decades, establishing a friendly community that takes as much pride in it's community as any who live in a condo in the city. It’s March when they get their marching orders and they have nine months to pack up and leave, or abandon what they cannot take with them. These folks prove to be a well organised bunch and appeal to both their landlords and the county for help to relocate, but for the most part their plight falls on deaf ears - either intentionally or unfortunately. The thrust of the story is told through Nancy and Laurie, with the latter somewhat more independent as the deadline approaches and the former becoming ill and less certain as to her options. None of these people are wealthy, indeed just like everyone else their assets are their homes. Having an income of three times their monthly rent in order to be able to find new housing is simply impossible for most of them. Trinity Broadcasting want the land for warehouses, but given they stay largely out of this documentary we are never quite sure what the urgency is to necessitate the dispossession of these residents. It’s unpleasant to watch their circumstances unfold but I have to say the actual film itself is a bit limited. Could it have taken a broader look at the rights of long-term tenants across the state? As the commissioner declares during one of the hearings, there is an acute housing shortage so surely making a couple of dozen families homeless to make way for commercial properties could be challenged? Still, I found Laurie to be of a remarkably stoic disposition and if her contradiction of the stereotypical “trailer-trash” image can help others in a similar situation to keep their homes, then perhaps this will have done what it set out to do?
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