Danelle Walkup’s mobile home isn’t air-conditioned.

“When the sun’s out, it can be a 140 degrees in here,” she said, shooing a dozen or so flies from the wooden table in her kitchen.

“Not all the windows have screens,” she explained. “So the flies get in. Wasps, too.”

Only a few of the electrical outlets work. There’s no hot water.

“The gas company said they can’t turn (the gas) on because it’s ‘red-tagged,'” she said. “That means it’s not safe. It’s ridiculous to have to live like this.”

Fed up, Walkup called City Hall on Monday.

“I wanted them to make the landlord fix things out here,” she said.

But when a zoning enforcement officer inspected her unit in the mobile home park at 827 Walnut St. in North Lawrence, he declared the property uninhabitable. Walkup was given 24 hours to move out.

“I have no money for another place,” she said, fighting back tears. “I have some friends who have a tent, so I guess I can camp out at the lake. I don’t know what else to do.”

Marcie Peterson, left, and Danelle Walkup bury their faces as Tony De La Torre, zoning enforcement officer for Lawrence, marks Peterson's trailer home as unsafe for occupancy. Peterson's household and Walkup's were given 24 hours to vacate their North Lawrence trailers after they were condemned Monday. Tenants at the park have complained about management ignoring repair problems, but reporting the problems to the city may well put them out of a home.

Douglas County records show the park is owned by Beal Family Revocable Trust, based in Walnut Creek, Calif. Attempts to reach a spokesman for the trust Monday were unsuccessful.

Several tenants and a former employee of the trailer park said they thought the park was owned by someone named Derrick who lived in California. None knew the owner’s last name.

Stan Zaremba, of Lawrence, said he sold the park to the California-based trust two years ago.

“There weren’t any problems when I sold it,” Zaremba said.

The park, which contains about 28 trailer homes, may be managed for the owners by Loren Jacoby, an Ottawa Realtor, the park’s former employee said. But messages left on Jacoby’s telephone answering machine Monday were not returned. Calls to his cell phone prompted a caller-out-of-area message.

Kids, no money, no place

6News video: City condemns two trailers at mobile home park

Several of Walkup’s neighbors said they, too, have had little success getting their mobile homes repaired. Most of the trailers appear to be of 1970s vintage and are in various stages of disrepair.

“If they came to my place, I’m sure they’d condemn it, too,” said Bobbie Brown Jr., an unemployed custodian whose unit sits across the driveway from Walkup’s. “It’s not suitable. But I’ve got six kids, no money and no place else to go. What am I supposed to do?”

Another tenant said she learned two weeks ago she had been living in a unit that had been condemned for several months.

“They need to shut this place down,” said the woman, a single mother with three children. “The fuse box in my place is in my kids’ bedroom, and for two days there were sparks coming out of it. I called and called. It took three days for somebody to come out and fix it.

“There’s barely any water in the kitchen. My kids won’t drink the water, it’s so bad,” she said. “The gas is shut off, so there’s no hot water for washing dishes.”

The woman, who has a job cleaning motel rooms for $6.75 an hour, asked that her name not be used.

Viewed from inside is one of the condemned mobile homes at a North Lawrence trailer park. After tenants informed the city of the home's condition, they were given 24 hours to vacate the property.

“I found me another place,” she said. “But I didn’t put this place down as a reference because of all the trouble I’ve had here.”

Quick rent, slow repairs

Several tenants said they’ve refused to pay their $500- and $600-a-month rents because long-promised repairs have not been made.

“The thing that gets me is they want your rent right away, but when it comes to repairs they want all the time in the world,” said Bobbie Brown’s wife, Margarita. “That doesn’t seem fair to me.”

Barry Walthall, head of the city’s code enforcement office, said the park had been in trouble before.

“From our perspective, they’re not doing a very good job of making corrections,” he said, noting that several tenants had called to complain in recent weeks.

“This puts us in an awkward position because we know that a lot of times they have no place else to go,” he said. “But for us the question is, do we let someone occupy a place that’s unsafe or do we move them out? Our position is they have to move out.”

Lawrence Zoning Enforcement Officer Tony De La Torre tapes a notice to vacate to the door of a trailer in the Walnut Street trailer park in North Lawrence.

Walthall said three of the trailers in the park have been declared uninhabitable by the city. Others, he said, have been “posted,” a term meaning the owner has been ordered to make repairs. Two trailers were partially dismantled.

The trailers surround a square of cracked asphalt. Some had air conditioners precariously hanging from windows.

Last week, city officials ordered the park owners to cut back the weeds.

Walthall said his office would press the park’s owner for repairs.

“We’ve got an inspector putting in a lot of time on this,” he said. “We want it resolved.”