Trailer Park Turns Trashy, Residents Speak Out

The stench of problems at a Little Rock trailer park overwhelms neighbors, who just want a safe place to live. One of them spoke to News 4 Arkansas` Mike Hellgren about conditions at the Spencer trailer park in the southwest part of the city. The broken windows, trash, old cars, and burned out trailers here don`t say "home sweet home." For Kay Moore, there`s nothing sweet about her rental home at all. Raw sewage flows underneath her floor. "It stinks. It smells just like what it is," Moore says. Standing pools of that sewer water surround her lawn. "These people over here have kids. These people have kids and grandkids who come over and play," she says Moore`s roof is filled with weeds. Her bathroom is filled with mold, and a hole in the floor. "Called the city...said they can`t do anything about it...told me to call the health department. They told me to call Waste Management and nobody could give me any answers, and I was just getting fed up with them." She`s also fed up with her landlord. Mike Bock, a man he hired to fix the problems, showed up while we were there. "I`ve taken care of the sewage problem, and I`m going to be taking care of the problems that need to be taken care of," Bock told Hellgren. He told us the problems here are unfortunate. As for the owner, "He`s a good man. He`s a good man. He does try," says Bock. But, he says, the owner`s had financial problems with the park. And the community activist group A.C.O.R.N. told Hellgren the property is owned in part by a former Little Rock judge. When we contacted that judge, he told us he no longer has responsibility for the trailer park. He also told us, it didn`t look like this ten years ago when he owned it But Kay Moore won`t take excuses. She says she`s speaking out because others are too afraid: "Most of the people here are low income, and they can`t afford to move," she says. They`ll just have to hold their noses and hope these trailer troubles turn around soon and make their homes sweeter than they are today. The city, so far, hasn`t fined the trailer park`s owner. Moore says it`s a welcome site seeing someone making improvements Friday.