CARLTON FLETCHER: A startling look at part of ‘real Albany’

Living just enough for the city.

— Stevie Wonder

This is meant to slight no one, but if the people bent on introducing outsiders to the “real Albany” want to be honest, they need to load up some buses and take the curious on a trip to some of the notorious mobile home parks that inundate the southeast sector of the city.

Suggestion: Travel in the daytime.

After spending Friday morning with Ward I Albany City Commissioner Jon Howard, touring most of the 16 mobile home parks that are in his ward alone, I left with a much clearer understanding of why Howard “stays on” local law enforcement about crime and living standard issues that plague his ward. And I felt a hollowness inside, unsure how the city has managed for so long to pretty much ignore segments that Howard aptly notes “remind me of third-world countries.”

Howard has served as representative of Albany’s Ward I for 25 years, and he has a unique rapport with his constituents, a large number of whom have “grown old with me,” the city commissioner says. Now, he notes, sadness welling in his words, “These people have watched their neighborhoods crumble down around them, and they’re too old and they’ve been there too long to get out.”

Some of the mobile home parks Howard and I toured were in lovely neighborhoods, their owners obviously instilled with the same kind of pride that’s common in neighborhoods throughout Albany. Some, though, offered a disarming statement on the human condition, a look at the depths to which people will sink in their quest to find shelter from the elements.

Many of the dwellings Howard and I encountered, given their ramshackle condition, could offer only scant protection from the summer sun and winter cold. And the faces of many of the people we encountered while driving through these neighborhoods betrayed the hardships that are common to the life they’ve chosen, most as a last resort.

As we moved from one mobile home park to the next — Oak Grove Estates, Loblolly, Albany Dunes, Banner Oaks, Pine Bluff Country Estates, Peter Court, Madeline Trailer Park, Cardinal Court, Robins Landing … — the levels of deprivation sometimes beyond human comprehension, I asked Howard why, with all the grant money that’s available in an enterprise city like Albany, more isn’t done to improve the plight of the residents of these impoverished neighborhoods.

He chooses his words carefully.

“Unfortunately, with all that we have going on in the city, I think when it comes to issues like this, there is a kind of ‘it’s not in my backyard’ attitude among my fellow officials,” Howard said. “Unless you see these places, unless you get out and visit them and talk to the people that live there, you have no idea what it’s like.

“Unfortunately, it’s so ingrained in our city — and you see all of the things that we talk about that plague our city: blight, crime, litter, drugs in many of these neighborhoods — there is no easy way to resolve this problem. It’s going to mean, in a lot of places, tearing things down and starting from scratch. We’re talking years and years and a lot of money.”

As we talked about legislation co-sponsored by former state Rep. Darrel Ealum that would make it easier for property owners to remove abandoned trailers from their property as a way of improving the living conditions in some of Albany’s more notorious mobile home parks, Howard and I came upon an ugly pile of debris in the Albany Dunes park. While I took pictures, two vehicles arrived, one bearing a crew there to clean up the mess and another the manager of the park.

Jennifer Parrish said the new owner of the mobile home park was not only cleaning up debris, removing 18 abandoned trailers, and having work done on other substandard units, she had been instructed to knock on the doors of each mobile home and tell occupants to clean up the litter in their yards or face consequences.

“Having an owner or a real manager in the city, not off in another state, helps,” Howard said. “It’s certainly a blessing to know that someone is doing the right thing here.”

And, yes, with dwellings throughout the city that could not meet even minimal habitation standards, mounds of trash piled in yards, roadways pocked with potholes and sometimes calf-deep indentions, abandoned — often burned-out — structures that provided convenient gathering places for drug dealers, water from no-longer-working septic systems running through yards, the new restrictions at Albany Dunes seemed a mere drop in the bucket of issues that these neighborhoods face.

But, at least, it was something. And in that something lies a small measure of hope.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.