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For nearly a decade, Teresa Lezama built a life at Silver Court Trailer Park in Miami.
She paid roughly $55,000 for her trailer home on park property, where she raised her family. The park where she rents land for her trailer was quiet, affordable, and stable, one of the few places left in Miami where working-class residents could realistically afford to live.
As of March 11, she said, all of that is slipping away.
“They left a notice on the door saying we had to move out,” Lezama told Prism, referencing a letter from The Urban Group, a real estate consulting firm acting on behalf of park owner 1989 Sunny Court LLC. “It affected me a lot. It’s affected my health.”
Roughly 200 Silver Court residents are now facing eviction after The Urban Group issued a closure notice for the trailer park due to planned redevelopment of the property near Southwest 8th Street and 32nd Avenue. Residents say those willing to leave by the end of May were offered compensation packages ranging from roughly $11,000 to $13,000—amounts advocates argue are nowhere near enough to replace the homes residents spent decades paying for in mortgages and repairs.
To incentivize residents to move as soon as possible, the park’s owners are offering tiered payments: $10,000 for those who leave by May 31, $5,000 for departures by July 15, and $2,500 for anyone who relocates by the end of August. These amounts are in addition to state compensation ranging from $1,375 to $6,000, depending on the trailer’s size and whether the owner chooses to relocate it, a process that can be both expensive and difficult to coordinate. Silver Court residents’ trailers are their primary asset, and their market values are double or triple the park owner’s largest buyout offer. Still, if residents do not leave by September, they will face forced eviction.
Silver Court rests on high-value land. Sunny Court LLC is affiliated with California-based Marquis Property Company, which in 2021 purchased Silver Court and the Sunnyside/West Haven trailer park in West Miami for a total of $50 million.
The forced closure of Silver Court is the latest in a growing wave of trailer and mobile home park displacements across South Florida, including at Li’l Abner in Sweetwater, where residents were also evicted by The Urban Group. Rising land values and redevelopment pressures are rapidly eliminating some of the region’s last naturally occurring affordable housing, residential properties that are affordable to low- and moderate-income households but receive no government subsidies or deed restrictions.
Sunny Court has not revealed its plans for the property. 1989 Sunny Court, Marquis Property Company, and The Urban Group did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.
Miami commissioner gets implicated
According to public records, Miami Commissioner Ralph Rosado may have known about plans to close Silver Court Trailer Park months before the residents were officially notified of the displacement.
A March 11 email obtained by residents’ legal team shows that Zan Marquis of Marquis Property Group contacted Rosado’s chief of staff and senior staff after a meeting held “a few months ago.” In the message, Marquis informed city officials that the company was in the process of issuing six-month closure notices to tenants at Silver Court.
The disclosure raised concerns among residents, who say Rosado later portrayed the closure as new information during a public meeting held April 3.
At that meeting, Rosado told residents that city officials were “finding out about things as they happen.” The commissioner also alleged that the city did not yet know what the property owners planned to do with the site.
“What I learned recently is that the owners—you have new owners … a new company based in California—have made the decision to sell the property,” Rosado told residents on April 3. “We don’t have any more details than that about what they want to do.”
Jennifer Torna, director of communications for Rosado, told Prism in a statement that the property owner had met with his office on July 30, 2025, but the conversation was “introductory in nature and generally referenced the possibility that the property could eventually be sold, similar to discussions previously held with former Commissioner Manolo Reyes’ office.”
Torna said that Rosado’s office was not informed in advance that eviction notices would be issued to residents and affirmed that Rosado’s office has been coordinating directly with nonprofit organizations on individual resident cases.
“[We] can report that housing solutions have been identified for more than 50% of Silver Court residents to date,” said Torna. “Aside from introductions, the only topic discussed was that ownership may eventually consider selling the property, which they stated had also been discussed with the previous Commissioner and his staff.”
Residents and community supporters gathered outside Rosado’s District 4 office at Coral Gate Park on May 27 to demand answers and support.
An affordable oasis
For residents like Marisela Viñales, who has lived at Silver Court for 13 years, the closure feels like the destruction of an entire life built through sacrifice and years of labor.
In 2013, Viñales couldn’t afford to buy a house, but she could afford a $20,000 trailer in Silver Court, just a short drive away from Miami’s burgeoning downtown and beaches.
“I nearly had a heart attack,” said Viñales, describing the moment she heard news of the closure. “It’s been very, very hard for everyone because that means starting from scratch.”
Over the years, Viñales said she invested tens of thousands of dollars repairing and renovating the home, including replacing the roof twice and remodeling the interior.
The park offered long-term stability for working-class immigrants and retirees trying to survive Miami’s housing market, Viñales said.
“There were never any problems,” she said. Loud music was prohibited after 10 p.m., with planned events requiring preauthorization. Men couldn’t be shirtless. Mess was discouraged. “There was excellent discipline,” Viñales said.
Now, she said, residents are being pushed out with nowhere to go.
Ahmed Mori, a Miami organizer and doctoral researcher in sociology at Johns Hopkins University, said the Silver Court fight reflects a much larger housing crisis unfolding across the country.
We’re starting to see the extinction of an entire way of life. This is one of the last bastions of naturally occurring affordable housing, and we’re seeing an elimination of it.
Ahmed Mori, Miami organizer and Johns Hopkins researcher
“This is a bit of a domino effect,” Mori said. “We’re starting to see the extinction of an entire way of life. This is one of the last bastions of naturally occurring affordable housing, and we’re seeing an elimination of it.”
Mori, who has worked alongside residents organizing at Silver Court, said trailer park communities are especially vulnerable because while residents often own their homes, they do not own the land beneath them.
Over time, most residents invest tens of thousands of dollars into their trailers, believing they have achieved a measure of housing stability in an otherwise unaffordable market. But when park owners decide to sell or redevelop the land, residents are often offered limited compensation or can otherwise be forced to abandon their homes.
“These aren’t high-liquidity households,” Mori said. “People put their savings into these homes because they were priced out of the broader housing market.”
Doing the math
Under Florida law, residents facing park closure are entitled to statutory compensation if they abandon their homes. According to attorneys working with residents, those payments can be as low as $1,375 for a single-wide mobile home and $2,750 for a multi-wide unit.
Silver Court residents were offered additional incentive payments if they vacate early.
One resident, Julio, who is only using his first name due to fear of retaliation from park owners, purchased a trailer a year ago for $48,000. He told Prism that park management only offered about $13,000 if he moved out before the end of May.
“That’s a huge loss,” said Julio.
Housing advocates say the math simply does not work in Miami’s housing market.
“It’s hard to find a one-bedroom right now in Miami for less than $2,500 [a month],” said Carrie Feit, an attorney with Community Justice Project, which provides legal support for racial justice and human rights causes in Florida. “These are usually families. They’re being asked to walk away from homes they invested $50,000, sometimes $90,000 into.”
For many residents, relocation is not realistic. Despite the name, moving older mobile homes is often prohibitively expensive or physically impossible. Many units are permanently affixed to concrete foundations or have deteriorated over time.
As a result, residents are often forced to abandon their homes entirely. Viñales, who pays $961 a month in rent at Silver Court, said she earns roughly $13 an hour caring for elderly residents, often working long days and overnight shifts. Even with multiple jobs and good credit, she has yet to qualify for a loan as a first-time homeowner. She said the relocation money offered by the company would disappear almost immediately in Miami’s rental market.
“I have to stay here until the end, no matter what,” Viñales said. “I realized that in two months, that $10,000 would be gone. I won’t make $2,500 even if I work my butt off. Where am I going to get the money to pay for it? I don’t have it.”
Organizing for survival
In response to the closure notice, Silver Court residents recently formed a homeowners association (HOA), which advocates say gives residents greater collective bargaining power. The HOA allows residents to organize formally, secure legal representation, and potentially exercise rights under Florida law, including a right of first refusal if the property is sold.
“It’s really important when trying to think of how to publicly and/or privately pressure owners [and] management companies to come to the table for a negotiation,” said Mori.
Residents have begun holding regular meetings while organizers and attorneys explore possible legal options. Every Wednesday, dozens of residents gather outside their homes and walk to the highly trafficked SW 9th Street, the famous Calle Ocho, to protest the eviction and raise awareness within the community. On May 6, dozens of residents took part, including a 90-year-old.
Alejandro Carlos Macias, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who is helping to organize residents, said Silver Court represents a much larger fight.
“[Housing] is a big issue for the working class all over America,” Macias said. “But it’s more of a unique issue for us in Miami.”
One potential solution, according to Mori, is legislation that mandates park owners provide more funds to residents, raising the statutory minimum that is offered, in addition to giving evicted residents more time to relocate.
State Sen. Ileana Garcia is considering legislation to address these issues. Potential legislation can replicate SB 1550 and its identical companion House Bill 703, which proposed increasing moving expenses and state displacement payments from $3,000 to $6,500 for single-section homes and from $6,000 to $11,500 for multi-section homes. For residents choosing to abandon their homes due to displacement, compensation would have increased from $1,375 to $5,000 for single-section homes and from $2,750 to $7,000 for multi-section units. However, the bills died in March.
“We talked to [Garcia] specifically about organizing a town hall where we could speak to some former residents from Lil Abner, as well as maybe other mobile home park residents,” said Mori. “I think a more public town hall style of that could be a first step to actually having community informed legislation be put forward.”
According to Feit, co-op models known as Resident Owned Cooperatives can help residents purchase their land with national nonprofits providing assistance and financing, and land trusts can purchase and steward the land for residents to keep it permanently affordable.
“That is my dream for South Florida mobile home parks and Florida,” said the attorney. “That this model becomes more mainstream, that it’s more accessible, and that we can offer it early on to residents.”
In the immediate future, Macias said organizers are fighting primarily for more time and greater compensation for residents facing displacement. Viñales and other longtime Silver Court residents are asking for at least a three- to five-year extension.
“We’re fighting to get an extension, even if it’s just to have time to prepare, to keep looking,” Viñales explained. “I hope we can get the extension approved and that this helps, that what we achieve benefits others who come after us.”
Update, May 28, 2026: This story was updated to include a statement from Miami Commissioner Ralph Rosado sent to Prism after publication.
Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima and Tina Vasquez, Lead Editors
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor
