ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Giovanni Jimenez said the Lake Downey Mobile Home Park was the only home he’s ever known. Through 17 years, he’s watched it turn from a vibrant, family-like Hispanic neighborhood to something more suited as a background in Mad Max.

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Few of the trailers in the park haven’t been vandalized. The lucky ones have smashed windows and broken doors. Others have had entire sides torn off and metal stripped by vandals and scrappers that prowl the neighborhood, looking for things to sell.

The water system in the park was shut off in the spring. Before that, the state considered it unsafe to drink, according to a lawsuit filed by the Department of Environmental Protection in June.

“Buying gallons of water the Family Dollar next door or just… put buckets outside to get the water, flush the toilet,” he said, when asked how he and his parents were managing.

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The Jimenez family is supposed to pay $440 in lot fees each month. Like the other tenants, they’ve stopped those payments.

However, they can’t afford to move anywhere else.

The day they have to pack up is fast approaching. County records show the residents were supposed to vacate the premises by the end of June as the property owner prepared to sell the park to a developer. According to court records, some, if not most of the evictions haven’t been finalized by a judge. Staff members say the sale is also proceeding less than smoothly.

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Lake Downey Mobile Home Park Few of the trailers in the park haven’t been vandalized. The lucky ones have smashed windows and broken doors. Others have had entire sides torn off and metal stripped by vandals and scrappers that prowl the neighborhood, looking for things to sell. (wftv.com)

Part of the problem might be the fines that current owner, Manohar Jain, is racking up by the day. Code enforcement has cited Jain for issues ranging from an unsafe pool to the lack of fire hydrants in the densely packed property. He accrues an additional $3,000 per day for noncompliance, code enforcement officers said. As of July 20, the liens on the property total nearly $2.6 million.

That’s more than the Orange County Property Appraiser’s office believes the land is worth, which is less than $1.8 million.

Tenants say Jain hasn’t tried to fix up the place in recent years, though they suspect he is at least aware of the construction equipment that they said sometimes shows up in the middle of the night to tear down homes, sometimes with tenants still sleeping inside.

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“That was like one in the morning,” Jimenez recalled, of a recent episode that happened to a family he knew. “They’re knocking it down and it doesn’t seem like it’s an official contract. There’s no safety, no tape, nothing like that to protect the people. Like, they’re still children living inside it.”

Viviana Colón, the daughter of another tenant, said small group was able to stop a different home from being bulldozed while its tenant was out running an errand.

“We was on time, we didn’t let them do that,” she said.

Neighbors of the park say the conditions are attracting homeless camps and crime. They reported vandalism, gun shots and seeing people overdosing on drugs, sometimes within steps of the entrance of the elementary school next door.

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The sheriff’s office called the park “very problematic,” and said deputies are on that street every day to help control the damage. They’ve made dozens of arrests in and around the park since the start of the year, records showed, and were granted additional trespassing authority on a county-owned parcel near the park last week.

“I watched a guy with an automatic pistol blow a few rounds off,” one longtime neighbor, who asked for his name to be kept out of our reporting, said.

His wife, who made the same request, said there appeared to be little progress toward making their quality of life better permanently.

“The fines are accruing, and hands are tied about a lot of things,” she claimed code enforcement told her.

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WFTV asked Orange County why, given the value of the liens compared to the value of the property, they hadn’t moved to seize the property from Jain.

“The County can foreclose on the lien. However, that is not the solution to every unresolved code violation. Foreclosure can be a lengthy expensive process and there are unintended consequences,” spokeswoman Despina McLaughlin wrote.

McLaughlin added as an aside: “The core to this issue likely centers on why would a property owner allow their property to deteriorate to this state.”

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A phone call to the office that Jain listed on his numerous holdings around noon Friday was answered by a woman who suggested Jain would be available at 3 p.m. When WFTV called back, the same woman said Jain had left for the day and said reporters wouldn’t tell their side of the story truthfully.

County leaders have asked the incoming developer to form a plan to move tenants and campers before they clear the site. They also said county staff would bear some responsibility. It’s not clear if they plan to waive the fines imposed on the property to help the sale go through or try to collect the fines to offset the costs taxpayers have burdened by the law enforcement and code staffing over the years.

One internal estimate for just clearing and cleaning up the land came back north of $100,000.

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Residents like Jimenez, as well as the people who live adjacent to the park, hope the property owner will be forced to bear some responsibility for the condition the community has sunk to, sale or not. Residents also continue to hope the county would put its foot down until they are officially forced out.

When that will happen is also unclear. Rumors are flying around about a possible fence being constructed across the community’s sole entrance, even though the eviction cases are still pending.

“That’s messed up, what he’s doing,” Jimenez said. “Taking so much actions in the property without letting people know.”

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