Posted by Adelaide Kumi, MARIETTA, GA – When people think of Marietta, a northern suburb of Atlanta, they normally think of mostly white middle class residents commuting back and forth from the city in heavy traffic. But Marietta has its share of poor non-commuters as well like the Latino residents of Pine Haven. Pine Haven is a mobile home park with more than 100 households. The homes are affordable. According to one of the residents, the monthly rents range from $450 to $550. The average mobile home has two bedrooms, a small living room, a kitchen and a bathroom, and they are in relatively good condition.
Fortunately
for the Pine Haven residents being in the suburbs doesn't mean isolation from
needed amenities or employment opportunities. There is a small plaza adjacent to Pine Haven
with a variety of stores including a beauty salon, Family Dollar, a farmers market, a pawn
shop, a beauty products store, and even a night club. A coin
laundry facility and mechanic are close by as well. Almost all these retail outlets are Latino
(and a few Asian) owned, which gives members of the community a sense of
belonging. The stores also provide jobs to residents of the Pine Heaven
community. All the workers in the plaza come from the community and those without
work stand in the plaza waiting for day labor opportunities without being harassed by the store owners.
While
outsiders might view a mobile home park with a nearby pawn shop, coin laundry
facility that sells Lotto tickets, and what looks like a rundown nightclub as
signs of neighborhood dereliction, the crime rate is minimal because this is a
tight knit community. One resident told me there is hardly any police presence
because nothing bad ever happens. So the Pine Haven community may seem to those
that don’t know it as just another low income neighborhood with all the problems
such neighborhoods are assumed to have, only this one doesn’t because it’s a
real community.
Adelaide Kumi is a Sociology Major at
Georgia State University. She can be contacted at kumiade4@yahoo.com.
Lower incomes people have no hope of having a detached dwelling other than a mobile home park.
ReplyDeleteA mobile home can provide them with privacy, a yard, a sense of neighborhood.
You are actually helping people when you provide a quality mobile home park environment.
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