About 24 families living at the Lazy Day Mobile Home Trailer Park were served eviction notices on April 14.

According to the eviction letter, residents must move their trailers by Oct. 18, though their is a financial incentive to depart sooner. If trailer owners move or sign over the title to their trailer to the park owners by July 18, they are eligible to receive a $10,000 payment. If they do the same by Sept. 18, they can receive $5,000.

If they wait until the Oct. 18 deadline, they will get nothing. The October date is a few days after the six-month notice required by state law.

The property, according to Flathead County tax records, is owned by 2155 Columbia Falls LLC, which in turn, is owned by Freehouse Capital Partners, whose principal is Zach Ware of Whitefish.

Ware did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the future of the site once the trailers are removed. Freehouse Capital, according to its website, is a real estate investment firm

The Park is located off U.S. 2 in Columbia Falls at the corner of Meadow Lake Boulevard.

Residents, who declined to give their names because of the sensitive nature of the situation, were already looking for new homes.

One man said he was looking at a trailer park in Olney. He said he moved into the Lazy Day Mobile Home Trailer Park about nine years ago when longtime Columbia Falls business owner Dick Mitsch owned it. Mitsch kept the lot rents low and everything was great for a few years, the man said. But Mitsch died in 2019 and the trailer park went through a couple of different owners. Lot rent prices went up, too, from about $275 a month to $650 today.

The park has problems, too, with its septic and water systems, the man said. He said he was hoping to save up enough to buy a house, but that seemed unlikely now.

Another woman, who also declined to have her name used, has two children. She and her husband both work two jobs, but they’ve built everything they owned on savings and cash, including their trailer.

“I thought I was doing a good thing (avoiding credit cards),” she said.

Her trailer is a 1985 model, but they recently remodeled it with new siding. Still, she said she’s unsure they’ll be able to move it, even if they find another trailer park, because many won’t take older models.

“A lot of people in the park have no choice but to leave their trailers,” she said.

If push comes to shove, they could live in a camper at their in-laws house until they find a place, she said.

“We’ll have to start all over,” she said.

Another woman found herself in a similar predicament. She is a widow and has a child at home. 

She has a good job in Columbia Falls, but not enough money to move. She noted that it cost $6,000 to move a trailer, if a person can even find a park that will take it.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said.