Mobile home park residents served with eviction notices Oct. 16 court date set; residents planned protest outside park BY COLLEEN LUTOLF Staff Writer BRICK - Laurelton Mobile Home Park residents may not reap the benefits of a proposed law that was crafted to protect them - about 70 park residents received eviction notices last week. "We've been served," said Bonnye Spino, president of the Laurelton Mobile Home Park Homeowners Association. Morris is seeking approximately $2,000 each from residents who have withheld their rents, about six months' worth. Edgewood Properties representatives at Beckerman PR, Morris' hired public relations firm, have not responded to e-mailed questions. The residents are scheduled to appear in Ocean County state Superior Court in Toms River on Monday, Oct. 16. Edgewood Properties has hired Charles Hanlon of the law firm Hanlon Niemann, Freehold, to represent Edgewood Properties in the case. Park residents have been withholding their rents from their landlord, Jack Morris' development firm Edgewood Properties, for the past six months due to the park's maintenance conditions. "We have s-- in our yards, literally, broken water pipes," she said. "We have reason enough because of the sewerage and all. He [Morris] made promises - he was going to cut down all the bad trees, pave the roads and make our park a place we'd be proud of. It's garbage." Spino and at least 50 residents planned to protest the conditions outside the park Wednesday, she said. In April, residents notified the local press to publicize conditions at their mobile home park - sewer pipes breaking on a weekly basis, potholed dirt roads, and a lack of general upkeep. When Edgewood Properties purchased the mobile home park last year, residents were told their rent would increase but park conditions would improve as a result. The residents' rent did increase, some by 40 percent, but no such improvements have been made aside from some landscaping upkeep. Shortly after Edgewood Properties agreed to roll back the residents' rents, it was made public that recycled fill tainted with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) deemed too dangerous for use on residential property had been dumped on the site and used to fill potholes throughout the park. Although Morris rolled residents' rents back to their original amount and the PCB-tainted fill was removed in June (the state Department of Environmental Protection has yet to sign off on the cleanup of the site), residents continued to withhold their rents from Edgewood Properties by placing their rent money in a trust account. Although Spino received rent coupons stating her rent was $500 a month, after the rents were rolled back to an average of $360 a month, a Edgewood Properties representative said Edgewood stated in an e-mail: "No notices of any kind have gone out for two months. So there must be a misunderstanding of some kind: perhaps the resident thought the notice was new when in fact he or she had received it at sometime in the past." But now Edgewood Properties is claiming Spino owes $3,270 in back rent - for $500 a month, plus administrative fees. "They're saying I'm a new resident because I bought a new mobile home in September [2005]," Spino said. Hanlon could not be reached for comment.