In recent years, La Marque launched an effort to clean up blight and has taken steps to identify dilapidated and dangerous structures, which city leaders said create eyesores and are sources of crime. In a community survey and report published last year, residents identified blight among their major concerns.

Since 2012, the city has budgeted more than $250,000 for blight demolition and almost $200,000 for mowing high grass and weeds, La Marque City Manager Carol Buttler said.

In the last four years, the city’s Building and Standards Commission has identified 404 structures as substandard, Buttler said. Nearly 90 properties have been demolished so far by either the city, property owner or county, she said.

The mobile-home park is exactly the sort of blight city leaders had in mind when they started their campaign to clear structures deemed unsuitable for habitation.

For the few people still living in the trailer park, 831 Retama St., however, the condemnation notice forced a scramble to find affordable housing — and revealed how few options exist for the county’s poorest residents.

Potential tipping point

“In any given community there are people living very close to the edge,” said Ted Hanley.

Hanley heads Jesse Tree, a nonprofit that serves low-income people.

“They’re living in places where they can just barely make it and get by sometimes paying little to no rent,” Hanley said. “This can be the factor that topples them into homelessness.”

About a dozen trailers are scattered on small lots around the park, many unoccupied and growing algae on their exteriors. Some are completely open, allowing the elements, animals and looters in. The only pest control is a troupe of feral cats that roam the place.

Even the residents admit the park has fallen apart.

“Yeah, this place kind of looks like Chernobyl,” Lori Bianucci said. “It’s a dumpy-looking place now, but it was a good place to live at one time.”

It’s home

For the remaining residents, the park is not just a home but a support network.

The women own their trailers outright and the cheap rent to park — about $150 a month in Bianucci’s case — has kept them living there for decades.

Like many people living in poverty, the women have formed their own economy, of sorts.

Bianucci, 57, has her own trailer, but she frequently spends nights with her neighbor, Loretta Guidry, 84, to take care of her. The two pool what scant income they have to cover expenses.

Charlotte Embry, who lives in a trailer across the way, said that after decades together the small community is tight-knit. She’s known Guidry for at least 30 years.

“I’ve been here, I’ve known this park,” Embry said. “The people here are practically family. I can’t think of any place other than being with them.”

The city’s Building and Standards Commission will vote Tuesday on whether to condemn the park across the street, 830 Retama St., where Embry lives with her son.

Years of neglect

The Daisyville Trailer Park, as it was formerly known, wasn’t the victim of a violent storm. Rather, it’s been ground down by years of neglect.

The owner, Forrest Wicks, is ill and unable to comment, brother Warren Wicks said. Warren Wicks, of Fort Worth, conceded, however, that Forrest Wicks hadn’t maintained the property the way he should have.

“He’s let it go so bad,” Wicks said. “He hasn’t taken care of it.”

Forrest Wicks bought the park with his wife about 15 years ago from earlier owners. According to the residents, he now lives in Kansas.

Forrest Wicks gave his brother power over the property during the evictions, Warren Wicks said.

Warren Wicks estimated the park brought in about $900 a month in recent years.

Plans to demolish

The orange condemnation notice arrived a couple of months ago.

The city said that after receiving several complaints, the Building and Standards Commission condemned the park in January. It had determined that it was no longer fit for human habitation.

The city gave residents information about who to contact, such as United Way, to receive assistance with moving and proceeded with plans to demolish the park, La Marque City Manager Carol Buttler said. The Code Enforcement Department gave the women an extra month, Guidry said.

But few resources exist to help defray the costs of moving, which can add up to thousands of dollars, Hanley said. And there’s a limited stock of safe, affordable housing for those getting by on extremely low income, he said.

A spokeswoman for United Way in Texas City said the organization can sometimes assist with moves. The American Red Cross is also sometimes able to help, but it is on a case-by-case basis, she said.

The city will put out bids for the demolition after April 30, Buttler said. Warren Wicks said he plans to visit before that and to oversee the demolition.

Searching for affordable housing

City officials say they are doing what they can to assist the residents. But for the women, the past few months have been traumatic and uncertain.

“I’m 84, and it’s got me so shook up I don’t know what I’m doing,” Guidry said.

Given that the women bring in less than $700 a month in income, others had suggested they might be able to apply for public housing. After years of living in their own homes, the residents seemed almost bewildered by the thought.

“I’ve told the city I would fix my own home with my own money,” Embry said after being asked about applying for housing.

Also, there aren’t any public housing units available now, said Benjamin Davis, the housing programs coordinator for the Texas City Housing Authority.

La Marque has just 58 Housing Choice Voucher program units, and all are occupied, Davis said. In Texas City, there are 751 housing vouchers and 50 public housing apartments, Davis said. More than 500 households are on the waiting list for vouchers, down from 2,000 in 2011, he said.

“If someone walked into our office today we wouldn’t be able to help them get into housing right away,” Davis said.

Davis said he also wasn’t aware of any nearby housing authorities with housing available now.

Rising rents

In the market, the average rent in Texas City is $750 per month for a one-bedroom apartment, according to rental statistics from myapartmentmap.com. Even doubled up, it would be difficult to make the math work for the women.

In La Marque, the median home value is about $85,000, according to U.S. Census data. The figure is far less than the state average — $132,000 — but out of reach for many locals.

“Rents are getting higher all the time, and there’s no way to replace that for people who are not in public housing,” Hanley said.

The women said they were afraid about what the future might hold. Bianucci said she and Guidry have found a park to move into on Plum Street in La Marque. The duo moved Bianucci’s decades-old trailer, but in the move the gutters were crushed and pieces of the trailer fell off, she said. They are waiting to get electricity and plumbing set up before moving in this month.

“When I went over there I almost cried,” Bianucci said. “I said, ‘That doesn’t look like my house.’”

Bianucci worries the trailer park on Plum Street could be condemned as well, she said.

The thought of being separated or leaving for the unknown is enough to cause sleepless nights, the women said.

“We thought we had a place to live,” Bianucci said. “We’re just freaking out. We need help. Once in a while we all need help.”