Residents living scared in mobile home park
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer

BRICK TOWNSHIP - Just a few years ago, the Laurelton Mobile Home Park off Route 88 was a peaceful, tidy haven for senior citizens.

Not anymore.

The senior citizens in the 81-home, age-restricted park are living in an "atmosphere of fear," said Bonnye Spino, president of the park's homeowners association.

"They are petrified because of the burglaries," she said this week. "Someone actually kicked a man's door in. These people are in their 80s and 90s. They can't defend themselves. We are all living in fear."

One by one, park residents and residents from the nearby Laurelton Heights development came to the microphone at the Sept. 25 Township Council meeting to tell Mayor Daniel J. Kelly and council members what life is like in the park these days.

"You want to spend $11 million for a senior center but you don't want to spend any money on code enforcement?" said one man who lives in Laurelton Heights. "Who is looking after these people? I've lived this town all my life. I don't feel safe anymore. If I don't feel safe, they [senior citizens] must feel 10 times worse."

Kelly, council President Stephen C. Acropolis, and township police department detectives planned to meet with mobile home park residents and Laurelton Heights residents today.

"We will take the issues as they come," the mayor said. "I'm sympathetic to everything, but this is not the Old West. We can't just do want we want to do, we have to follow the law.

"The police are doing their work right now," Kelly said. "They are on top of it. It seems to be one particular location in the mobile home park that is the worst offender."

The park's problems began three years ago when the park was sold. The new owner, Edgewood Properties, began renting homes to younger people who didn't meet the age 55 and over restriction at the park, Spino said.

"Apparently a lot of the people are troubled young people and we are the ones who have to put up with it." she said. "The biggest problems are the drugs. We have a few homes in here where they are exchanging drugs. They are robbing homes to get drugs."

Kelly and Police Chief Ronald Dougard met with the residents over a month ago in town hall to discuss their concerns.

Dougard, Spino said, told the residents that the park had no more problems than any other area in town, a statement that infuriated her.

Spino said the residents have no doubt they have more than their share of problems at the park.

"We already know about all the problems," she said. "We had an overdose. A woman overdosed and died. We had all the cops at one home. They were there almost every day of the week taking people out and arresting them. And he [Dougard] had the nerve to say we had no more problems than anyone else."

Dougard was on vacation this week and could not be reached for comment.

But Capt. John Rein said there have been burglaries at the park over the past several weeks.

"It's not anything more that what's going on in any other neighborhood," he said. "There are some concerns we've been made aware of."

No one from Edgewood Properties was available to comment on the statements made by residents. The Bulletin was told to e-mail questions to an employee there and he would forward them to Morris. The Bulletin did not receive any answers by press time.

Acropolis said after the meeting that the council had given the administration the "tools" to take care of problems at the park, including an ordinance that requires Edgewood to have a full-time, onsite manager.

"It's the council's responsibility to give the administration every tool they require to make sure people that live in that park are protected," he said. "It's the administration's job to enforce it."

"We will deal with this problem," Kelly said. "If there is a problem, it's a Brick problem. It's not a council problem, it's not an administration problem. We are working for the people of Brick."

The township code enforcement officer should be at the park "every day," checking to see who lives there, Acropolis said at the Township Council meeting.

"I hope our guys are going out there every single day," he said. "It's an enforcement issue. We've got to do a better job going out there."

Township Attorney Jean Cipriani said the township is in the process of trying to find the identity and ages of everyone who lives in the park, so the level of compliance can be assessed.

Edgewood has not followed through on a promise to install a full-time manager on site, Spino said.

Instead, there is an assistant manager who forwards messages to the full-time manager, who rarely visits the site, she said.

"We haven't seen her in probably a month," Spino said. "She never comes here. We need an office on site. We need a manager that's here and can watch the park and make sure we don't have all this criminal activity coming in here constantly."

Residents from Laurelton Heights came to Spino and told her the robberies were spilling over into their neighborhood.

"And they were not going to tolerate it," she said. "They were blaming the landlord. This was a very good place until the new landlord took over."

Until more is done, park residents will continue to live in fear, Spino said.

"We leave our homes, we don't know if we are coming home to find them ransacked," she said. "They are watching people and getting their schedules. They know when you leave and when you come home and they are doing them [burglaries] in broad daylight."