The memory of Rebecca Voiles’ father lives on inside her mobile home.

“He built the porch. He was trying to upgrade this house when he died,” Rebecca said about the work the late Richard Voiles put into her family’s 1974 trailer.

“But I’m going to have to say goodbye to it,” she said. “And it’s going to be like having to bury him all over again.”

Rebecca is a resident of the Kentucky Gardens Mobile Home Park on River Street, located in the footprint of local couple Eddie and Joy Hanks’ plans for a new development alongside Barren River.

Close to three dozen mobile homes sit on top of land the Hanks, co-owners of TPM Group Environmental and Construction Services, presently own.

Joy Hanks estimated about 75 people live in the park. The residents’ housing needs and the couple’s dreams have clashed multiple times throughout the summer.

Christened “Digs on the River,” the 23-acre project is planned to include apartment buildings, commercial and restaurant spaces, a boutique hotel and potentially a boardwalk down on the bank.

Joy Hanks said the duo have been purchasing property on River Street since the early 1990s in anticipation of this kind of development.

The couple’s request to rezone their land to planned unit development won approval from the City-County Planning Commission on May 18, and then went before the Bowling Green Board of Commissioners in late June.

The commissioners ended up tabling their vote for a later date, citing a desire for more information about the couple’s plans.

Each meeting saw heavy opposition from Kentucky Gardens residents, who showed out in droves – including Rebecca – on both occasions.

“My dad fought tooth and nail to already have a deed so his later generations would have a home,” she said. “Now we have to go through this again?”

This past Friday, Eddie and Joy Hanks went door-to-door throughout the park to lay out a concrete timeline.

According to a letter given to tenants, they are guaranteed their spot until July 31, 2024, as long as they “maintain the parameters of lease conditions.”

Joy Hanks said that three months prior to that date, the couple will provide a development notice and give an updated timeline on extended lot rentals, followed by quarterly updates.

The letter states that development might not commence for two or more years beyond July 31, 2023.

“At all times, they’re going to know way in advance and at this point they have at least a year,” Joy Hanks told the Daily News.

Rebecca said she returned to her trailer two years ago. She, her brother, mother and two children, ages 12 and 2, all call it home.

She said she inherited the trailer when her father died, but pays the Hanks $310 each month for the lot of land beneath it.

“I just do the best I can with what I’ve got,” she said. “This is what it looks like to survive. Not a lot of people understand, this is one step away from being homeless. You’ve got four walls and a roof, you’re not out in the weather. But one step down from this is homelessness.”

She said the mood around the park has been one of fear ever since news of the rezoning first broke.

“Everyone is scared,” she said. “Now I’ve got to take time out of hanging out with my kids, going to the park and all that. I’ve got to be looking for places, figuring out deposits.”

The Daily News acquired the City-County Planning Commission’s public notice that was sent to tenants regarding the May meeting.

Joy Hanks said she did not know that a notice would be given out, and said that they had planned on providing at least a year’s advance warning once the couple had a better idea of how development was going.

“We knew they would have at least a year’s head’s up but we didn’t think we were anywhere near that. We still don’t,” Joy Hanks said.

She said she wished she knew a notice was coming so the couple could go through the park beforehand to tell residents “you have nothing to worry about as far as moving out quickly. You have a year plus.”

“It wasn’t like we were trying to keep a secret; why would you tell someone when this is so far away and worry people?” Joy Hanks said. “And I still don’t know how far away we are, if this goes through, to breaking ground.”

Joy Hanks provided a separate letter to the Daily news, further outlining the couple’s thoughts.

“The fact is, this mobile home park is one of the oldest in Bowling Green. The infrastructure is deteriorating due to age,” the letter reads. “If we had updated this park as was needed when we purchased it in 2017, the families living in it would have had to relocate at that time.”

Rebecca said her trailer can’t be moved to another location due to its age. She’s in a similar situation to Cindy Floyd and her family, who live up the street.

Floyd purchased her 1986 home last October for $7,000. It doesn’t have a trailer hitch, so it is “literally not able to be moved,” she said.

She said she’s still paying off the loan for the trailer, working a construction job while doing so. She and her children – ages 19, 13, 12 and 10 – all share the home.

She said the purchase was a way to give her kids some solid ground as the family currently lives paycheck to paycheck.

“That was the point in buying this, so that they’d be stable,” Floyd said. “That they could go to the same schools. So they could have the same friends. So they can see and meet the same teachers and graduate from the same school.”

She added that instead of “playing ball” together, the kids of the mobile home park now talk about what will happen if their families have to vacate for development.

“They have excelled,” she said. “But if they’ve got this worry over their heads, how are they going to go to school?”

Cindy said that her son, 10-year-old Landon, often asks her what the family will do if they have to move. She said Paine, her 12-year-old daughter, tells her that she’s looking forward to playing basketball for Warren East Middle School in the fall and doesn’t want to move again.

Joy Hanks told the Daily News she understands that the homes are “irreplaceable” for some of the families. The letter she provided states that “we truly care about these families and we understand they are wanting stability in a place they call home.”

She said she has heard from other trailer park owners who have some empty spots if there are Kentucky Gardens homes that can be relocated.

“We can’t pay for people to go somewhere, but we’re going to give every single resource to make sure all these kids are in safe, stable, good places to live, whatever it is they choose or they can find to live,” Joy Hanks said.

Rebecca said she’s down to few options when it comes to moving. She said she encountered a $75 application fee at another trailer park.

“I don’t even have that, because $75 is what it takes for my daughter to have diapers in a month,” Rebecca said. “If I’ve got to choose, my children are always coming first.”

She said that she and her fellow tenants can file an application with Bowling Green’s Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program, “but you will be waiting for three to five years.”

Brent Childers, the city’s director of Neighborhood & Community Services, said the voucher program utilizes a system of preference points to place folks who apply. Applicants with more points are positioned higher on the list.

People who have been displaced due to code compliance or grant related activity undertaken by the city qualify for four points, as do applicants claiming the Scholar House preference. Those with a permanent residency in Bowling Green can claim two points, and applicants who are homeless can claim one point.

For someone without any points, Childers said the wait can indeed last years.

Joy Hanks said that while the couple can’t make a financial commitment to the families, she said she wants to help however she can.

“I don’t know how that’s going to work, but I know I can have them come in here and meet with me, sit down and we’ll work together,” Joy Hanks said. “I’ll hopefully connect with the programs, any resources I can find and start going from there.”

She said her hope is that Digs on the River is “something great for Bowling Green.”

“We don’t want it to be a detriment to a portion of our community,” Joy Hanks said.

The rezoning on the Hanks’ land will again go before the commissioners for its first reading Tuesday evening.

“Even though it’s a trailer in a trailer park, this is where we were going to put our roots,” Floyd said. “This is home. And now that’s jeopardized.”