During nearly two decades, Angélica González’s home was a gathering place in Chatham Estates, a mobile home community in Cary, North Carolina.
“My house is the coffee house,” González told Enlace Latino NC. Neighbors and relatives stopped by her dining room, where they celebrated birthdays and spent afternoons together after work.
But those gatherings are coming to an end. The community has been emptying out lot by lot. González and more than 140 families have until June 30 to leave.
Toll Brothers, one of the largest luxury homebuilders in the country, has a contract to purchase the 27 acres of Chatham Estates for about $30 million, according to Town of Cary records. On that same land, it plans to build 427 homes, with prices that could exceed $1 million, starting in 2027.
The displacement at Chatham Estates exposes a legal gap in North Carolina: thousands of residents own their homes, but not the land where they live. Although mobile homes make up 11.3% of the state’s housing stock, nearly double the national average, state law does not require compensation when these communities are replaced by new developments.
Few options
For residents, leaving Chatham Estates does not simply mean moving. In theory, they have three options: sell their mobile homes, relocate them or abandon them. In practice, none is easy.
Moving a mobile home can cost about $15,000, according to residents’ estimates. In many cases, it is not even possible: older or modified homes do not meet relocation requirements.
Even when moving is feasible, finding a place to install it is another obstacle.
Mara Arriaga, who has lived in the community for seven years, still has no clear alternative. Her family has not found available land in Cary to move their mobile home. Many parks with availability are in Chapel Hill, Raleigh or Apex.
“Right now, renting a house would mean paying double or triple what we pay,” Arriaga told Enlace Latino NC.
A resident who asked not to be identified said she found a lot for $800 per month, twice what she is currently paying, not including moving costs, so she ruled out that option.
The mother of three said her only alternative now is to share housing. The average rent in Cary is $2,000, so she plans to move into a two-bedroom apartment with another displaced resident to afford it.
“We have to crowd together,” she told Enlace Latino NC. “We have no other choice.”
Abandoning a home also involves paperwork and costs. Residents say they must sign and notarize documents to give up the title or declare abandonment.
A market that takes advantage of urgency
At the entrance to the park, several signs read: “We buy mobile homes.” With the deadline looming and few options, buyers are offering very low prices.
María Tapia, who has lived in Chatham Estates for 15 years, said her family was offered $2,000 for their home. Later, she said, they asked about an older mobile home in another park and were told it cost $40,000.
“They’re taking advantage of the fact that there’s no option left,” Tapia told Enlace Latino NC. “It’s theft and abuse.”
Direct pressure on the developer
Facing high relocation costs, residents have chosen to pressure Toll Brothers directly.
González was among the residents who went to the PNC Plaza building in Raleigh on Tuesday, April 21, to try to deliver a letter to Toll Brothers and its legal representative, Parker Poe, demanding a meeting and $2 million for relocation expenses.
They were unable to deliver it. PNC Plaza security staff asked them to leave, per request of the developer. Minutes later, police officers arrived after a call from the building.
“For them, it’s just a trailer,” said Cristina Pacheco, who has lived in Chatham Estates for more than two decades and participated in the action. “For me, it’s my home of 22 years. I’m very sad they won’t give us any help to move somewhere else to live.”
Council member Michelle Craig and community organizers from the Congreso de Organizaciones Latinas de Carolina del Norte supported residents.
“We want residents to be able to present their needs directly and demand compensation,” said Katia Roebuck, a community organizer with the Congreso de Organizaciones Latinas de Carolina del Norte, told Enlace Latino NC. “The town’s fund is not enough.”
Toll Brothers has promoted philanthropic initiatives supporting people experiencing homelessness. However, the company has not announced any commitment of direct assistance for displaced Chatham Estates residents and did not respond to requests for comment before publication.
A limited municipal fund
The Town of Cary created an $800,000 fund to support displaced families in the town, including Chatham Estates. Residents and public officials say it is not enough.
“When you divide that $800,000, between 100 and 44 households, that’s just not enough,” Council member Michelle Craig told Enlace Latino NC. “We’ve heard that some may cost tens of thousands of dollars to move their mobile homes.”
The municipal program, called Stables Homes Cary, is administered by Neighbor Up, formerly known as Dorcas Ministries, and offers assistance for deposits, initial rent and other moving costs, said Ande Curry, senior director of community services for the organization.
For this fund, households earning up to 300% of the federal poverty level, about $96,450 a year for a family of four in 2025, according to the program’s official website, qualify.
So far, 120 applications have been received, Curry told Enlace Latino NC. Nearly all applicants have been eligible under the income criteria; those who do not qualify for the municipal fund may be considered for private donations, she added.
González was approved to receive $12,000 from the municipal fund. She is not sure how long she will be able to keep paying for housing once that money runs out.
“I’m going to pay four times more than I paid here,” she said.
Residents are at different stages of the process, and some say they have not yet been approved since applying in January. María González, who has lived in the community since 2006, said she initially did not qualify for assistance due to her household income. Later, after her daughter moved out, she returned to the office with the necessary documents and was told she was now eligible.
González told Enlace Latino NC she still does not know how much she will receive or when.
Others have chosen to abandon the process. Mario Cruz Tapia said he stopped trying after learning about the requirements. He found housing on his own and secured an apartment in Oxford, more than 42 miles from Cary. He now pays $1,300 in rent, compared with $400, and shares housing with relatives to cover costs.
He has not yet adjusted to the change. “It’s different,” he told Enlace Latino NC about his new apartment. “I feel out of place.”
The need goes beyond financial assistance. Other residents face more basic barriers. Guadalupe Robledo, who moved to North Carolina three years ago from Guatemala, has not yet had her initial meeting with Neighbor Up because she does not have transportation to get to the office, she told Enlace Latino NC.
Curry urged those who feel excluded from the process or unsure about their status to contact the organization again, as funding has changed and an additional $68,484 in private funds are now available, of the $250,000 goal.
The only legal protection: notice
Under state law, park owners must provide at least 180 days’ notice if they plan to close or convert a property. Curtis Westbrook Sr., the owner of the land for over 40 years, gave residents timely notice. But the law does not require landowners, developers or local governments to provide relocation assistance or compensation.
Owning the mobile home, but not the land “can really cause the homeowner to feel that they have more protections than really they do legally,” said Holly Oner, manager of the housing practice group at Legal Aid of North Carolina, told Enlace Latino NC.
Compensation, in most cases, has depended on community pressure rather than the law, said Jason Pikler, Senior Attorney and Deputy Director of the NC Justice Center’s (NCJC) Housing, Consumer, Energy project.
“So the takeaway is that consumer protections for residents of mobile home parks should be strengthened,” Pikler told Enlace Latino NC.
Some states, such as Florida, California and Arizona, have adopted laws requiring compensation for mobile home residents displaced after a change in land use.
In North Carolina, in 2024, three Democratic lawmakers, including Graig Meyer, now executive director of the NCJC, introduced a bill that would have required compensation and extended the minimum notice period to 12 months. The measure did not pass.
The neighborhood empties out
As homes are dismantled or abandoned, some residents say they need a dumpster due to the accumulation of furniture, debris and belongings. Across the property, the change is already visible, lot by lot.
The structure next to María Linares’ home, a balcony, was being removed on Tuesday, April 21. Workers at the site explained it had to be dismantled to move the home, as it had been sold.
Linares, who had shared her story a month earlier, was no longer at the property. It was not possible to speak with her or learn where she had moved. Only her home remained, in the process of being relocated, incomplete.
The displacement at Chatham Estates reflects a broader dynamic.
“This is not unique to Cary,” Duke professor Charlie Becker told Enlace Latino NC. “Any community that’s growing, they’re going to try and push low-income households out. They want richer residents or higher-value uses that will generate more tax revenue and so on.”
According to Becker, the first economist to study the mobile home industry, this process reduces an important source of affordable housing and forces many families to move farther away, increasing their cost of living and transportation.
The transformation is already visible. On one empty lot, only a wooden staircase remains, no longer leading to any home.
What is disappearing in Chatham Estates is not just a park, but a housing model that supports thousands of families in North Carolina. Nearly 24% of mobile homeowners in the state are Latino, according to a report by the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. Its fragility does not depend on those who live there, but on the lack of protections when land changes hands.
As the neighborhood empties, Gonzalez’s daughter, a student at Mills Park Middle School, struggles with the uncertainty of leaving the place where she grew up. She thinks about the coffee afternoons, about the people who came and went from her home.
The table where González welcomed neighbors and family for years is no longer there. She gave it away in late April.
She and her family will soon move to Morrisville.
“Who is going to come have coffee with me now?” González said. “I’ll be by myself.”
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