A Friend of Unfair Park who's been following our coverage of the closing of the Ash Creek Mobile Home Park points us to Pegasus News today. There, Mike Orren suggests ways folks can help the neediest of the some 100 residents getting the boot from the 1940s low-income haven the city finally succeeded in closing down.
Aid efforts are being coordinated by Marty Ray of Concerned Neighbors of AshCreek Homes, who recently posted to the group's Web site a scathing piece in which she described city council member Leo Chaney and the Ferguson Road Initiative as "losers." Still, as "disgusted" as Ray says she is with how the city and some neighbors handled the Ash Creek affair, she also says it's time to move on and help the residents who need it most. "Any help is important now," she tells Unfair Park. "No matter where it comes from."
Ray, a former member of the FRI, says she worked with Ash Creek resident and manager Evelyn Rangel to determine the neediest families in the park, and they came up with 12 homes in which there were familes with children, folks who were "having trouble with their jobs" and elderly people living on fixed incomes. So Ray is helping to raise money to buy them Minyard Food Store gift cards, rather than the boxes of food and toys that were gathered last year, when it first appeared Ash Creek was going to be shut down after the City of Dallas Board of Adjustment began threatening the place.
"It's amazing that here it is again, right at the holiday time," Ray says. She adds that additional donations will be spread amongst the needier residents of the park. "But this is a tiny drop in the bucket," says Ray, who can be reached here should you want to contribute. "They will still need plenty of help after Christmas." --Robert Wilonsky