Some residents of a South Bend trailer park are sweating a deadline coming Tuesday when they’ll no longer be allowed to use window air-conditioning units.
With their thinner walls and lack of insulation to keep the heat out, mobile homes can get hot in the summer, especially in this recent heat dome. At Countryside Village on Mayflower Road, units that the park owns have central air-conditioning. But residents own some of the trailers and pay lot rent, and some of them have only window air-conditioners.
Residents say the park has told them they must remove window units by Tuesday. Bill May, his pregnant fiancee and her son live there in a trailer he bought from his mother. May says he can’t afford to add central air.
“The trailers absorb the sun and heats up the inside, and it gets so hot that it’s unbearable," May says.
His mother, Kimberly Willis, lives across the street in another trailer she owns with only window units.
“In the summer they’re ovens," she says. "If we have to take our air-conditionings out we will die. My husband is on oxygen. He has a heart condition, lung condition. We can’t go without air-conditioning. If they’re going to make me take them out, I will sue them.”
Yes! Communities, the park’s Denver-based owner, did not reply to WVPE’s interview request.
