Trailer park woes: a month to find a new home, and no electricity in the interim
Bill Lidey of Washington is a friend of Beverley Wilson, who is staying at his home since electricity was cut off to her mobile home in the Wiencek mobile home park. Wilson has lived in the park for over 25 years.
Willis Hartzog removes an air conditioner from a window in his home to allow more light inside. The electricity was shut off at Wiencek mobile home park in Wolfdale this week. Hartzog said he and his wife, Rosalie, have lived in the park for 22 years and are uncertain of their next move.
Eugene Fenton, 67, lived in the Wiencek mobile home park for more than 40 years. Holding his dog, Lily, he talked about living without electricity and being forced to move in 30 days.
Jim McElhaney, 60, has lived for more than 25 years at Wiencek mobile home park in Wolfdale. He said he has a good relationship with the owners.
A view of some of the homes in the Wiencek mobile home park in Wolfdale
Stanley Wiencek Jr. is shown in front of his dairy bar and restaurant in Wolfdale in this 2013 photo.
Two years ago, Beverly Wilson picked out a deep shade of exterior paint called “Blueberry” and happily applied it to her mobile home along Jefferson Avenue in Wolfdale, where a little sign out front reads “Welcome” and fragrant hyacinths blossom in earnest after magnolias fade.
Wilson is not there to enjoy the flowers.
“I didn’t want to leave, but what?” she asked. “What do you do now? I have Stage 4 cancer. I can’t stay there with no electric. It’s just a shell.”
Until Wednesday, Wilson, 65, a Washington County Health Center employee, lived at Wiencek mobile home park, but she’s now staying with friends elsewhere in Washington. On Thursday, a friend was picking up her mail and gave her a 30-day eviction notice addressed to “Tenant, Lot 20.”
The power company terminated service to residents of the mobile home park, though tenants paid electric bills to their landlord, Stanley C. Wiencek Jr. Wilson said Wiencek is in arrears to the tune of about $21,000.
Todd Meyers, West Penn Power spokesman, said of those who live in the 16 to 17 occupied mobile homes, “The tenants aren’t our customers, because we’re not metering them.
“He (Wiencek) is the West Penn Power customer. The last time we got a payment was September of 2014. I’m not going to get into what he owes us, but it’s not something that’s accrued overnight. It’s been a rolling balance. Even a couple of years ago, it wasn’t a whole lot less than it is now.”
The tenants are considered, in utility lingo, “sub-metered.” If they could scrape together a month’s payment, Meyers said the power company would restore electrical service for another month.
But it would be a stop-gap measure unless the past-due account is settled.
“I understand these people are in a hard spot, and we recognize that,” Meyers said, noting the electric company in June of last year also terminated service.
The mobile home park is next door to Wiencek’s Dairy Bar and Restaurant, where Stanley Wiencek Jr. was working Friday morning.
“I got to keep this operating right here at the moment,” Wiencek said. “The bill that’s owed, I can’t pay it right now. The money’s got to go toward taxes. It went toward other things. I started slowly getting behind. The only way to pay my bills is to sell the (mobile home park) property so I can get squared up with the power company.”
Wiencek said the park, which has 16 to 17 spaces, is down to about five tenants. “Everything is closed starting today, May 1,” he continued. “The park is shut down. Nobody owes rent now. I’ve got three or four of them that have been really good tenants over the years. If I got a business that’s in the hole, I can close it up and do what I want with it. I’ve been putting money from this business (the dairy bar) into that business (the trailer park) for a long time. I’m basically done with the park, and I want to get rid of it. Things are going too fast, and the media is only making it worse.”
A potential buyer of the trailer park, however, appeared Friday morning and left his card with Wiencek, whose father, Stanley Sr., opened the dairy bar in 1953. Another owner operated the trailer park, and Wiencek said his father purchased it in the early 1960s.
Eugene Fenton, 67, called the place home for the past 42 to 43 years, and he now shares his mobile home with a watchdog, a Pekingese-Chihuahua mix named Lily. While he has no refrigeration, he said Wiencek gave him ice for a cooler in which to keep his insulin and allowed him to charge his cellphone at the dairy bar.
“I have water,” said Fenton, a plastics plant retiree. “Not hot water.”
He uses oil to heat his trailer, but without electricity, his furnace won’t run on these chilly spring nights.
Fenton was about to purchase a charger for his cellphone that would operate from his truck battery, but he appeared to be taking his situation in stride.
“I’m just an old farmer, I lived out in the fields, I stayed out there all night. We’ll get by,” Fenton said. “It’s costing more ’cause I got to go out to eat and get something to drink. I’m just trying to bear with it for a while.”
Jim McElhaney, 60, a veteran, lived in his car after a stint in Vietnam, and he pointed to his Chevy Cobalt when asked where he might live next. He fears he won’t be able to bring his beloved cats with him if he finds a new home.
He said although rent is due the first of the month, Wiencek let him stay in a trailer even when he had no money.
“He has cut me so much slack over the years,” McElhaney said of his landlord.
“I give him credit for one thing. He is decent. He gave us our eviction notices – and he did it in person – which was decent, OK. He said he would work with us as much as is humanly possible so we could have extensions.”
He compared their 25-year landlord-tenant relationship to a marriage in which one spouse is sometimes cranky and so is the other.
“When the sun goes down and you guys are home watching TV, this place is like a coal mine,” he said of the darkness setting in.
A neighbor, Willis Hartzog and his wife, Rosalie, will try applying at Belvedere Acres, a housing development on the other side of Canton Township.
“I hate to leave because I’m not used to living in those apartments,” Hartzog said.
Beverly Wilson, who is about to begin treatment for her metastatic cancer, has had her blueberry-hued trailer posted with a “for sale” sign, and her helper, Bill Lidey, said the place would make a dandy hunting camp on another lot.
“I know I’ll never be back there,” Wilson said.