PEMBROKE PARK, Fla. – Residents at Lakeside Park Estates first called us earlier this week, to show us their eviction notices they’d been delivered – which only gave them weeks to pack up and leave their homes.
The property owner hadn’t responded to requests for comment from Local 10, but did hand out another letter to residents.
And this was an about-face for families at the mobile home community.
Less than 24 hours after we exposed these resident concerns, the people living at the mobile home community received a statement, claiming the order to evict that they had received was an “unintended misunderstanding.”
“I don’t understand how handing out eviction notices or tenancy terminations is an ‘unintentional misunderstanding,’” one man said.
The letter also says the property owner is looking forward to working with residents to find a “fair and equitable conclusion” to all of this.
On Friday night, these neighbors said they welcome the grace and mercy offered in the letter.
“It’s a little relief.”
“The letter is great, but what we truly want is compensation.”
So, how long will these families get to stay? And will they be compensated?
Earlier on in the situation, Silvia Diaz held up the copy of a check written to the Lakeside Park Estates. She paid $7,920 to be able to park her mobile home there for a year, starting March 15. Diaz was very stressed -- and she was not alone. She and all of the Lakeside Park Estate residents, including many retirees, received the 30-day eviction notice.
One of them said, “With the real estate prices, where are people supposed to live?”
The follow-up letter said, “We apologize for the confusion that this unintended misunderstanding might have caused. We look forward to working together with all concerned.”
Diaz’s neighbor, Walter Jaramillo, suspected the property was being sold for redevelopment.
A Broward County government official recently confirmed Jaramillo’s suspicions.
The Trinity Broadcasting Network, an international Christian-based broadcast television network, owns the property at 3300 Pembroke Road, just west of Interstate 95, in Pembroke Park.
Diaz said she found it ironic that a Christian organization would be so quick to hurt so many people.
“A lot of people that say that they are Christians and even my Bible says that many will come to him in the last days and they’ll say to Jesus, ‘Didn’t I do this? Didn’t I prophesize? Didn’t I heal?’ And he says, ‘I don’t know you!’”
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