In the 2024 hurricane season, reporters from NBC News, WUSF, Grist, and PBS all covered the devastation of Gulf Coast manufactured housing communities. They quoted residents, researchers, county officials, and FEMA representatives. They noted, repeatedly, that corporate park management companies declined to comment.1 Not a single on-the-record park manager appeared in any of the major coverage reviewed for this piece.
A silence that consistent is its own finding.
Darlene "Dar" Fourcade is not one of those silent managers, because Darlene Fourcade does not, strictly speaking, exist. She is a composite character built from documented accounts of manufactured housing park operations during and after Hurricanes Helene, Milton, Idalia, and Ian, combined with publicly available data on Florida's manufactured housing demographics, FEMA recovery programs, and county evacuation logistics. Every structural fact attributed to her experience is sourced. Her voice is imagined. The gap she fills is real.
We constructed the conversation we couldn't find on the screened porch of a park office in Hernando County, Florida. The office is a 1998 double-wide. Three lots visible from the porch are empty. One has a concrete pad with nothing on it. The other two have units with red "UNSAFE" placards still stapled to the doors.
You've managed this park for nineteen years. What was the job when you started?
Dar: Maintenance requests and lease paperwork. Somebody's skirting comes loose, you call a guy. Somebody's late on rent, you have a conversation. Normal landlord stuff, small scale. Now? Last October I drove an 83-year-old woman to a shelter at 11 p.m. because her daughter in Ohio couldn't get a flight and she doesn't drive. That's not in my job description. There is no job description. I have a lease agreement with my management company that says I maintain the grounds and collect rent. The evacuation coordination, the FEMA paperwork help, the calls to county emergency management? That's just me deciding somebody should do it.
Florida law doesn't require you to do any of that.
Dar: The evacuation order goes to residents. "If you are in a mobile home, you should follow all evacuation orders."2 Great. Follow them where? With what car? Hernando County issued a mandatory evacuation for all manufactured homes countywide for Milton.3 Every single one. You know how many of my residents don't have a vehicle that can make it to Brooksville, let alone out of the county?
How many?
Dar: At least nine households last time. I keep a list. It's a notebook. It's not a system. I write down who needs a ride, who's refusing to go, who I can't reach by phone. The county doesn't ask me for that list. Nobody asks me for that list.
You came to Florida after Katrina.
Dar: [pause] I don't usually lead with that. But yeah. Chalmette, St. Bernard Parish. Lost everything. We came over because my husband's cousin had a place, and I took this job because it came with a lot. Free housing. That was the whole calculation. Twenty years later I'm the person helping other people through the exact same thing, except now it happens every year instead of once.
The park has been hit by three storms in thirteen months.
Dar: Idalia, Helene, Milton. Idalia was manageable. Lost some roofs, some skirting, couple trees. Helene was the water. We had lots that took three, four feet.4 And then Milton came before anyone had finished drying out. I had residents camping in their own units because the mold was already in the walls but they had nowhere else to go.5
You can't recover from one before the next one hits. That's the thing nobody covers. It's not the storm. It's the interval.
After Helene, were residents still paying lot rent on units that had been condemned?
Dar: [long pause] I can't answer that the way you want me to. What I'll say is I've seen reporting on other parks where that happened.6 Where the management company expected rent on lots with red tags on the doors. And I'll say that when your corporate office is in Illinois or wherever, they're looking at a spreadsheet. They're not looking at Ninda's bedroom that smells like mold.
That's a real person. Ninda Menegias, Twin City Mobile Home Park, St. Petersburg.
Dar: I know. I read that story. I know twenty Nindas.
What happens to the community after each storm? Who leaves, who stays?
Dar: The people with options leave. That's just math. If you have family somewhere, savings, a car that runs, you go. The people who stay are the ones who can't afford the decision. And then the empty lots fill back up, but with different people. After Idalia, one of my long-term residents told me her rent went up two hundred dollars.7 Her roof still leaked. She didn't qualify for a FEMA trailer. Where's she supposed to go?
And the new people who move in, they don't know which lots flood. They don't know the drainage runs downhill toward Lot 34. I know. I'm the only one who knows. That knowledge isn't written down anywhere official. It's in my head and my notebook.
Fewer than one percent of manufactured housing residents nationally carry flood insurance.8
Dar: Right. So when I'm helping someone fill out FEMA paperwork, and I do, I sit right at this table with them, they don't have insurance documentation. They often don't have clear title because the home was purchased through a private sale. And they don't own the land.9 FEMA's system is built for a homeowner with a deed and a policy number. My residents have a handshake and a lot lease.
What do you want people to understand about this job?
Dar: [lights a cigarette, looks at the empty lots] That it doesn't exist. The role I play, evacuating people, connecting them to recovery programs, being the person who remembers which lots flood, that role does not exist in any legal or professional framework. There's no training. No certification. No liability protection. When something goes wrong, the company says they're not responsible because evacuation is the resident's obligation. The county says they issued the order. FEMA says they processed the applications.
Everyone did their job. Nobody's job was the actual people.
Would you leave?
Dar: And go where? [laughs] I'm a manufactured housing resident in a flood-prone area with no flood insurance. I'm my own demographic.
Florida's Rebuild Program currently offers manufactured housing unit replacement for homes damaged by the 2023 and 2024 storms, with priority for elderly, disabled, and low-income residents.10 HUD has allocated over $813 million in disaster recovery funding to Pinellas County alone.11 Whether these programs reach the residents Dar describes, those without clear title, without insurance documentation, without the baseline paperwork the system expects, is the gap between program design and lived reality that no spreadsheet in Skokie, Illinois, will capture.
Footnotes
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NBC News, "Milton leaves a Florida mobile home park in ruins," October 2024. Officials at Lakeshore Management's headquarters did not respond to a request for comment. https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/florida-mobile-home-park-told-evacuate-residents-nowhere-go-rcna174544 ↩
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Florida Division of Emergency Management, Know Your Zone. https://www.floridadisaster.org/knowyourzone/ ↩
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WUSF, "County-by-county evacuations for Hurricane Milton," October 7, 2024. https://www.wusf.org/weather/2024-10-07/county-by-county-evacuations-for-hurricane-milton ↩
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Grist, "For Floridians in mobile homes, Hurricane Helene was a disaster waiting to happen," October 2024. https://grist.org/housing/helene-manufactured-housing-mobile-homes-florida-big-bend/ ↩
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NBC News, October 2024. James William Lawson Jr. described living in a tent on his plot and entering his ruined trailer only for water because the mold was so pervasive. https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/florida-mobile-home-park-told-evacuate-residents-nowhere-go-rcna174544 ↩
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NBC News, October 2024. Twin City residents reported being forced to pay monthly rental fees on units deemed unlivable by city inspectors. https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/florida-mobile-home-park-told-evacuate-residents-nowhere-go-rcna174544 ↩
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WUSF/Grist, "In the crosshairs of the climate and housing crises," June 2024. https://www.wusf.org/weather/2024-06-01/in-the-crosshairs-of-the-climate-and-housing-crises ↩
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FEMA data as reported by Grist, October 2024. https://grist.org/housing/helene-manufactured-housing-mobile-homes-florida-big-bend/ ↩
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Grist, October 2024. Mobile home residents who don't own the land beneath their structures are often ineligible for buyout programs and face greater difficulty obtaining disaster aid. https://grist.org/housing/helene-manufactured-housing-mobile-homes-florida-big-bend/ ↩
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Florida CFO, Storm Resources / Rebuild Florida. https://myfloridacfo.com/division/ica/storm ↩
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HUD CDBG-DR allocation to Pinellas County for 2023-2024 storm recovery. https://myfloridacfo.com/division/ica/storm ↩