CLEVELAND — For Heather Malone, the Euclid Beach Mobile Home Community was an oasis.
She lived just steps from Lake Erie for 14 years in a tidy trailer surrounded by hand-painted statues and flowers. It’s the place where she found peace after striving for sobriety, where walking near the water helped her reconnect with herself.
In mid-November, Malone was one of the last tenants to leave, a witness to the final days of a place unlike any other in Cleveland.
Now the mobile home park is vacant. The land, off Lakeshore Boulevard in the city’s North Collinwood neighborhood, is being cleared to become part of a park. And the people who lived there – some for just a few years, some for generations – are settling into different homes scattered across the region and beyond.
“This whole experience has been unprecedented,” said Isaac Robb, vice president of planning, research and urban projects at the Western Reserve Land Conservancy.
The nonprofit bought the 28.5-acre site in late 2021 to protect it from development and bring it back into local hands.
RELATED: Western Reserve Land Conservancy buys Euclid Beach Mobile Home Community for $5.8 million
After a planning process, the land conservancy decided in early 2023 to close the park, which was half-empty and hemorrhaging money.
RELATED: Nonprofit recommends closure of embattled mobile home park, adding land to Euclid Creek Reservation
That decision left Malone and her neighbors in limbo, unsure about their future.
“When we found out they were gonna displace us, it went right through to the core of my heart, my bones, my soul,” she said.
The closure took more than 18 months. With help from a $6.2 million relocation and site preparation grant, the land conservancy bought out and moved more than 100 people.
Former residents interviewed by News 5 didn’t want to discuss the details of their financial packages. They’re happy and, in some cases, amazed with where they are now – in houses, condos, new mobile homes and apartments. But the path here was painful.
Malone ended up just a few blocks away. She bought a newly renovated house – a previously foreclosed and blighted property – from the Cuyahoga Land Bank.
“I have to pinch myself because I cannot believe this is my home,” she said.
Some of her former neighbors are adjusting to life in unfamiliar suburbs. Others moved into assisted living or landed with family members out of state.
“It’s been a very emotional process. A very long process,” said Sonya Edwards, who led a small team of real estate agents devoted to the project.
“This has, by far, been the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said Edwards, who has been in the real estate business for 30 years. “I did foreclosure work in the heart of foreclosure. And I thought that was the hardest. Until this.”
‘A lot of hiccups’
The conservancy was a first-time landlord on unfamiliar terrain. Of the 271 pads in the park, only 147 were occupied. Dozens of cats prowled the property.
RELATED: Nonprofit working to rehome dozens of cats previously dumped at Euclid Beach Mobile Home Park
Some of the trailers were abandoned. There were constant water leaks, leading to huge water and sewer bills.
Tenants, who owned their homes but not the land underneath them, were angry and scared. At the outset, it wasn’t clear what the conservancy would do.
The nonprofit bought the property when the longtime owner was looking to cash out. Developers were circling. City Councilman Mike Polensek was worried about the future of the land – and protections for tenants, many of them elderly and low-income people.
State law only requires a park owner to give tenants 180 days – six months – to move.
“We’re seeing this in story after story nationwide, where a mobile-home community sells and the outcomes for the residents are not positive,” Robb said. “Either they’re not able to afford to stay there or the conditions in the community continue to deteriorate.”
Planners looked at whether it might be possible to shrink the park, consolidating the occupied homes close to Lakeshore Boulevard. But the property needed more than $4 million worth of utility improvements and infrastructure work. And most of the trailers were too old to survive even a short move.
The land, flanked by Euclid Beach, Villa Angela and Wildwood parks, had been the subject of discussions for decades. From 1895 to 1969, it adjoined the popular Euclid Beach Park amusement park. The property was a campground, then seasonal lodging for amusement-park employees. Over the years, tents and cabins gave way to trailers.
In the 1980s, the state looked at buying the land for a public park. But that didn’t happen. “I’m not saying this property has had as many plans as the Downtown lakefront. But it’s not too far off,” Robb said.
When the conservancy announced its decision to wind things down, Malone and her neighbors banded together. They formed a tenants’ union with help from the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.
At first, they fought to stay. Later, they pushed for better compensation to leave.
RELATED: Euclid Beach Mobile Home Community still hopes they'll avoid having to move out
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The land conservancy ultimately agreed to follow the framework laid out by the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act, or URA. That law sets minimum standards for how to handle – and pay for – federally funded projects that displace people.
The mobile-home park transformation doesn’t involve any federal money at this point. But tenants wanted the clarity that it offered. And, skeptical, they wanted to make sure that the land conservancy wasn’t making all the rules.
“Nobody knew what they were doing,” Malone said. “So there was a lot of hiccups and a lot of mistakes and a lot of hurt people, you know, along the way.”
‘It felt like a start’
For Kenneth Blade, everything happened at the right time. He was already saving up money to buy a house, with hopes of moving in 2025. He was tired of the drug activity on his street in the mobile home park. And he was fed up with all the wildlife.
“Racoons just tore my place up,” Blade said. “My home was their home. … It was a constant fight with the critters over there. I had neighbors feeding the critters, too.”
Now, he lives in the nearby Glenville neighborhood, where he bought a single-family home from CHN Housing Partners, a local nonprofit focused on housing stability.
Blade moved in early October and hasn’t looked back.
“It felt good,” he said. “It felt like a start. To keep moving.”
Elisha Beard and her dogs, Dinah and Tink Tink, ended up in Warrensville Heights.
It was hard to find anything in decent condition in her price range on Cleveland’s East Side. Her manufactured home was modern enough to move, but other mobile home parks were too far away from her job at the Cleveland Sight Center in University Circle.
Last spring, she purchased a brand-new house built by the Cuyahoga Land Bank.
“I am still kind of in awe,” she said. “I just don’t know how to describe it.”
Beverly Holivay landed in Elyria, in a mobile home community that’s much better maintained. She’s living in a newer unit, too, with three bedrooms and a carport.
“When Sonya first called me, I can honestly say I didn’t want to hear it. … I didn’t want to speak to her. I didn’t want to talk to her,” Holivay said of the real estate agent. “I felt like they were all in cahoots. And I felt like it was just a mess.”
Eventually, though, she opened the door when Edwards knocked.
“And it was the best thing I could have did … because she helped me tremendously,” said Holivay, a nursing aide and minister who had lived near Euclid Beach for about 5 years.
Still, she disagrees with the decision to close her old neighborhood down.
“I feel like they just took over people’s houses and didn’t care. … Tore them down,” she said. “Wherever you’re going, you go.”
‘Time to move on’
In September, Holivay was diagnosed with colon cancer. During a recent interview at her new home, she couldn’t stand up. She spoke from her bed, describing how she’s in treatment and fighting to get healthy again – and to put this chapter behind her.
“I said I’ll do this interview, and that’s it for Euclid Beach,” she said. “Cause it’s time to move on.”
She believes the stress of the whole situation, the closure and the moving process, contributed to her illness. Some of her former neighbors were sick. Others were struggling with addiction, isolation and mental health problems.
“In life, I don’t care what neighborhood we go to, what community we go to. We are all going through things,” Edwards said. “And this was no different.”
Many of the tenants were grieving, too, for a way of life they were losing.
Grief is a feeling Edwards knows well. In September 2023, her husband died just as her work at the mobile home park was ramping up. She poured herself into the job – making and delivering soup and listening to stories. Sorting through feelings first, then the facts.
“When a resident said to me, ‘My wife died here. I don’t think that I can leave here,’ I could understand that,” said Edwards, who runs a nonprofit brokerage called Realty Reimagined.
Some tenants had a lot of options. Others didn’t, especially if they had evictions or criminal convictions on their records. Pets made finding new homes more complicated. In some cases, fair housing groups had to get involved in negotiations with new landlords.
The housing market was hard to navigate, with soaring home prices and rents. In the end, the Cuyahoga Land Bank, CHN Housing Partners and Habitat for Humanity provided some of the houses and condos, while civic programs helped to fill the financial gaps.
The relocation packages were structured so that people wouldn’t be hit with hefty tax bills or forced off social safety-net programs. The idea was to put them in better – and financially sustainable – situations.
“Our team and partners really stepped up and made safe, stable, affordable housing the key goal for every household in here,” Robb said.
‘We lived through it'
Malone spent months focusing on her neighbors instead of herself.
She tried to quell their fears and encourage them to make the most of the situation. Then, one day, panic set in. People were leaving, and she didn’t have a plan yet.
Houses in her price range needed too much work. Apartments seemed impossibly expensive, coming from a community where the monthly lot rent was about $400.
“That day came, when all the fear and anger came, and I felt every bit of it,” she said. “And I know exactly what it was like for everybody else.”
As her whole world shifted, she relied on the lessons and affirmations she’s learned from Alcoholics Anonymous. And she leaned on Edwards, the real estate agent who became a friend.
“We weren’t numbers to her at all,” Malone said. “We were actual people.”
Then the gutted house near East 185th Street came along, about 1.5 miles from the mobile home park. Malone watched the land bank turn it into a home, a bright and hopeful space she shares with her cat, Rocky.
Edwards gave up her commission on the sale to cover the cost of appliances.
Now Malone’s taking a deep breath on her own. She's no longer part of a movement.
Her old trailer is still standing – earmarked for demolition. She won’t be ready to go back to Euclid Beach for a while.
“By that time – and it will be some time – I’ll be healed,” she said. “I’ll be happier.”
The land conservancy expects to sell the property to the Cleveland Metroparks in mid-2025, permanently preserving it as green space once the clean-up is done. It could take several years to incorporate the land into the surrounding park.
Malone hopes there will be a sign, or some sort of public recognition, that people once lived there. “I think it would be nice to have a plaque with each and every one of our names on it. Because we endured it. We lived through it,” she said.
She’s unpacking her future – while cherishing the past.
“I guess,” she said, “I’m a part of history now.”
