Hearing set on bid to banish $1,500 trailer; suit against one Arkansas city says law biased against poor

A map showing the location of McCrory.
A map showing the location of McCrory.

A federal judge has set a hearing for Thursday on a civil-rights organization's request to halt the enforcement of a McCrory ordinance that banishes any mobile home worth less than $7,500 from the city limits.

A small Washington, D.C., nonprofit civil-rights organization, Equal Justice Under the Law, sued the city and its police chief, Paul Hatch, last Thursday in federal court, saying the ordinance constitutes wealth-based discrimination and should be thrown out as unconstitutional.

The organization is representing a McCrory couple who moved a mobile home, worth an estimated $1,500, to McCrory from the neighboring town of Morton on Sept. 6 -- just 10 days before the McCrory City Council passed Ordinance No. 306.

It stipulates, "No trailer shall be put in the city ... unless it has a value established by a certified appraiser or a bill of sale of not less than $7,500. The owner is responsible for any cost to obtain these documents."

The ordinance provides for a fine of between $50 and $500 a day as long as the violation exists, with "no guidance on how fines in individual cases will be determined within that range," according to the lawsuit, which adds that the lack of guidance "leaves violators extremely vulnerable to abuse of discretion by enforcers, who are not accountable to any sort of oversight or appeals process."

Messages were left Tuesday for several city officials in the Woodruff County town of about 1,700 people, including Hatch, Mayor Doyle Fowler and the city attorney, Ralph Myers III. None was returned.

"We didn't know that these kinds of ordinances existed," attorney Phil Telfeyan of Equal Justice said Tuesday. "It's not just unequal. It's just bizarre."

The five-person legal nonprofit group travels across the country to represent people for free in its quest to eliminate wealth-based discrimination, its primary focus. Until receiving a letter that the McCrory couple sent out in December to numerous groups in search of help, the organization had never come across such an ordinance.

"We immediately booked a flight to McCrory," he said.

Now, Telfeyan said, "We have become aware of a few places in Arkansas that have similar laws." He named the towns of Patterson and Augusta, also in Woodruff County.

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Telfeyan said the police chief told the engaged McCrory couple, David Watlington, 31, and Lindsey Hollaway, 30, on Dec. 7 that they would have to move "after the holidays" because their trailer doesn't comply with the new ordinance.

"We were not given any written notice to vacate or opportunity to contest or appeal, and we were not given any opportunity to show that our trailer complies with all reasonable health regulations," Watlington wrote in an affidavit attached to the lawsuit.

Telfeyan said the two remain in the mobile home for now, unable to move anywhere else on such short notice and with limited funds.

Watlington is unemployed, which he contends is largely because McCrory police records are inaccurate in showing that his driver's license is suspended, which has led to him being pulled over numerous times and ticketed, though he cannot pay the tickets and the resulting court costs.

Hollaway works at the Worldwide Label facility in McCrory, earning about $13,000 a year and using a 1992 Honda Accord for transportation. She and her fiance pay $100 a month to the owner of the land on which the mobile home is parked, and the landlord has indicated that they pay their rent on time and she wants them to stay, Telfeyan said.

Telfeyan said he has seen the mobile home and it's not odd-looking, in disrepair or a fire hazard.

According to the couple's affidavits, Watlington bought the trailer in October 2015 and fixed it up, installing a bathroom and making other repairs. The couple started living in it in November 2015 in Morton.

The couple moved to McCrory because Watlington has four children who live there and other relatives nearby, according to his affidavit. He said the two cannot afford a more expensive home because of their limited income. Hollaway said her parents and sister live about 30 miles away and her grandparents live about 50 miles away. The closeness of the couple's relatives and the fact that Hollaway works in McCrory prompted the couple to move there, and they would like to stay, according to the suit.

While the ordinance doesn't explain the $7,500 appraisal threshold for mobile homes, it justifies the monetary restrictions by citing "a need to regulate the placement of trailers."

"In McCrory," the lawsuit asserts, "the Trailer-Banishment Ordinance allows the banishment of individuals whose only 'crime' is being too poor to afford a mobile home worth $7,500 or more."

Telfeyan said the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination that isn't rationally related to a legitimate government interest, and, "There is no legitimate government interest that is rationally served by the requirement that every mobile home in the City be worth at least $7,500."

The ordinance lists four justifications for its passage: relief of overcrowding, promotion of orderly growth, health and notification to builders.

But Telfeyan argued that there is no evidence of existing or anticipated overcrowding in McCrory, which covers 2.4 square miles, with a population density of about 722 people per square mile, compared with Little Rock, with a population density of more than 1,700 people per square mile.

He also said that the $7,500 value requirement "does absolutely nothing to encourage orderly growth, which he called a euphemism for "getting rid of the poor."

The monetary value of a mobile home doesn't prevent undesirable health conditions, he said, noting that "any number of expensive alterations to a mobile home could increase its monetary value without increasing its health rating," such as the installation of a gold-plated shower, marble countertops or a surround-sound stereo system.

"It is unconstitutional to criminalize a status, such as poverty," the lawsuit asserts. It notes that Watlington and Hollaway live "well below the poverty line" and cannot legally be fined, banished or otherwise punished "for the mere status of being poor."

The lawsuit seeks class-action status, to represent anyone else adversely affected by the ordinance.

In addition to the temporary restraining order the organization will seek at Thursday's hearing, the lawsuit is asking for a preliminary injunction, and eventually a permanent injunction to prohibit the ordinance's enforcement.

It also asks for compensation for the plaintiffs for any damages they suffered as a result of the city's unconstitutional conduct, and an order awarding reasonable attorneys' fees.

Telfeyan said Tuesday that his group has discussed the problems in the ordinance with city officials, though the discussions have turned more serious since the filing of the lawsuit. He said he hopes the city decides to repeal the ordinance, but as of Tuesday evening, the injunction hearing remained scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday before U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. in the Little Rock federal courthouse.

"The defendants definitely don't want the federal courts to take a look at this law," he said.

Metro on 01/11/2017

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