Kentucky Gardens
The Kentucky Gardens Trailer Park is home to a diverse community. Residents enjoy the quiet and peaceful sanctuary they have created.
A Kentucky Gardens resident listens to speeches during a park meeting to discuss fundraising options and event planning. Since the park’s rezoning, residents have sought to mobilize, creating the group “BG Home Owners United” with hopes to come together and find ways to raise money to keep their mobile homes.
Keila Colorado (left), Cindy Floyd (far right) and Star Morse meet outside of Morse's trailer to discuss logistics for an upcoming fundraising event. Colorado has two kids with autism making life challenging and moving a dilemma.
Larry Wimpee takes his dog Spike on a short walk around his trailer. A retired brick lawyer, Wimpee says he has been living in the park for 13 years and has enjoyed sitting under the awning covering his front porch. Wimpee is frustrated and unsure how he is going to relocate due to his old age. “I’m working on moving now, trying to find a place, trying to find the money to do it,” Wimpee said. “I don’t even have a car.”
Jesse Fernandez dives over a jump rope while playing with other kids from Kentucky Gardens. Younger residents in the trailer park spend their time running between the trailers, racing each other on their bikes and playing a myriad of sports.
Brandon Vincent looks across the trailer park while taking a break from working on his mopeds. "If we don't start to help ourselves, we might end up in a position to have no help at all," said Vincent.
Jesse Floyd examines a leaking sewage pipe at the trailer park. Tape had been used as a temporary fix for the pipe after residents reported it was leaking into the floodplain of the Barren River. Many residents are frustrated with the way they have been treated by the park owners, citing lack of communication and important repairs taking long amounts of time to be completed.
Residents gather for a park-wide meeting to brainstorm ideas to raise money. In order to help with relocation costs, a Go Fund Me was created to allow donations to be sent to the park.
The people of the park deliberate into the evening during a meeting to discuss the status of their current situation. Resident Star Morse (fourth from left) led attendees in brainstorming ideas for different fundraisers, and shared recent communications she had with the park owners, Eddie and Joy Hanks. With the park's large Hispanic population, Leyda Becker, the Bowling Green International Community Liaison translated for the Spanish speaking residents.
Star Morse is interviewed by Western Kentucky University’s News Channel 12 about the rezoning of the park. “We’re getting no compensation whatsoever from the landowners because they have no legal obligation to,” Morse said to reporter Adi Shanie.
Star Morse holds her daughter during a meeting with Keila Colorado, Rebecca Violes, left, and Nora Knight, right, to discuss fundraising logistics at Greenwood Mall in Bowling Green, Ky.
A construction crew works to tear down resident Larry Wimpee’s trailer. The workers tore down the metal siding with crowbars and electric saws.
Karma Silz looks through papers she received from the park owners informing residents of the current timeline in construction now giving them until 2026 to move out. Despite time extensions by the owners and months of fundraising, roughly half of the park had decided to vacate, leaving their trailers to be demolished.
Cindy Floyd bought her trailer a year and a half ago.
The single mom remembers a time when she would wake up every day and worry about where she would sleep that night. Floyd says Kentucky Gardens Mobile Home Park allows families, like hers, to enjoy peace of mind after a long day of work and holds a sense of community.
“To us, it's not just a trailer park, it's our homes,” Floyd said.
The residents of Kentucky Gardens may not have their community for long after their trailer park was rezoned to allow development of a condominium complex. Now their homes and day-to-day stability is at stake.
According to KRS Statute 110.438 any mobile home trailer that has a pitched roof cannot be moved.
As of July of 2023, residents were given twelve months to find adequate housing due to rezoning, and because most of the trailers in the park cannot be moved, residents must find a completely new place to live. Residents say that they have not been offered any compensation for the material value or monetary requirements needed to relocate.
At a loud and busy food court in Greenwood Mall, several residents gather to discuss the difficult task of raising the money necessary to help relocate families within the park. The group of all women are fearful for their future.
“My kids are afraid,” said Keila Colorado. “This is the only place they call home.”
The mall meeting sparked a bigger meeting on February 19th, 2024 at the park. A table with hot coffee and papers are laid out next to a large piece of paper sitting on an easel. Not everyone was on the same page, just across the park as the sun set, one resident packed their belongings into the back of a truck with the help of a friend.
Colorado says Kentucky Gardens is where her children grew up, enjoy life at the park because of the sense of community, and acknowledges the safety she knows is not present at other parks in Bowling Green.
Having two kids with autism makes life a challenge Colorado says. Her children face discrimination having heard them called “retarded” and “dumb.” With the family’s sole income coming from her husband’s relocation is a huge undertaking.
Colorado sees the situation she was put in as unfair, and her kids ask her if they are going to be kicked out, where will they live?
“By doing this, they are throwing my kids' dreams away,” Colorado says. “It’s hard to find a house right now,” Colorado says. Citing the housing crisis facing the United States. “I have to fight for my kids, because I am a lion and I want to protect my kids, my cubs.”