A vanishing community: Spring Creek Mobile Home Park residents celebrate holidays with eviction looming

For Thanksgiving, John Wallace would throw a ham on the barbeque and let it smoke for the day while his wife cooked the turkey. Then he’d eat until he couldn’t anymore, regretting it in the morning.  

Wallace has been building a family at the Spring Creek Mobile Home Park in Evergreen for almost a decade. His 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter know the community that sits off South Cedar Drive only as home.  

But the holiday meant for appreciating time spent surrounded by family has been hampered by an approaching eviction that has dispersed families who were once neighbors.  

“It’s almost gut wrenching,” John said. “It wasn’t exactly a permanent situation, but we were making a foundation on it.”   

The Wallace family, along with 26 other households in the park, received eviction notices in April after Brett Kelly, owner of 406 Home Buyers LLC, bought the 32-unit property a few months prior.  Kelly did not respond to a request for comment. 

Residents have since experienced a hike in rent and utilities while watching their once tight-knit community wither. 

Tenants originally believed they’d be allowed to stay, but that changed when residents were told that they would be required to vacate the property by November, a deadline that was later extended to March 31, 2025. 

Kelly planned to build new manufactured housing on elevated foundations outside the floodplain at the mobile home park. He posted a message on Facebook in May explaining his decision to evict residents.  

“Considering the extensive repairs needed, as well as the floodplain issue, it became evident that terminating existing lease agreements and removing homes was the only viable solution. This decision was not taken lightly but was made with the long-term wellbeing of the residents and part in mind,” part of the message reads. 

The increased rent has weighed financially on tenants already struggling to find land for a new home and pay the thousands of dollars to have their houses relocated. Some also splurged on renovations, before they became aware that they’d be uprooted. 

To help ease the financial burden of relocating, statewide affordable housing organization NeighborWorks Montana, partnering with the Whitefish Community Foundation, created an assistance fund that raised about $165,000. 

Roughly $5,000 is going to each family, and the organization is discussing how the remaining funds will be divided.  

Of the 27 households that received eviction notices, half a dozen remain in the park, according to Adam Poeschl from NeighborWorks Montana. Because the organization has never provided this type of financial assistance before, Poeschl is keeping in contact with each household, tracking their progress. He said about 57 residents were evicted. 

Most residents were able to remain within the Flathead Valley, according to Poeschl, but some moved to different parts of the country, including Alaska, Arizona, California and Oregon.  

All managed to avoid falling into homelessness, he said. 

IN DEBBIE Wallace’s mobile home, a wood carving of her surname hangs over the couch. Dozens of classic DVDs line her TV stand: “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Wayne’s World,” “Night Gallery.” Her black cat, Misty, prances around the compact but cozy residence.  

Family portraits line the living room walls. One features a younger Debbie touting blonde hair and a denim jacket. Another, hung up by the television, is of her son and neighbor, John Wallace. 

Spring Creek has been Debbie’s home for the past 14 years. She was planning to retire from her job at Walmart in June 2025 after turning 62, but the eviction is complicating those plans and may force her to retire early. 

John and his family hope to find a chunk of property to make into a new home.  

“I want to get the hell out of here,” he said.   

He hopes to take his mother’s home along with him, but that remains up in the air.  

His daughter asks him once a week where they are moving.   

“For a 5-year-old girl, little girl to say that kind of kicks a dad in the chops,” John said. “My son has been in this house since he was knee high on a grasshopper."  

“They know this place is home,” he said. 

April Derbyshire-Bulgar moved a few weeks ago and has struggled to find excitement for the holidays.  

“Usually, I’m feeling like the holiday spirit, and I don’t feel that this year. So, I feel kind of empty inside, I feel kind of lost,” she said. 

Derbyshire-Bulgar lived in Spring Creek for three years. There, she lived side-by-side with relatives and close friends, one of those being her brother-in-law.  

On Thanksgiving, she’d light a gas fire outside while her brother-in-law, the talented cook, made dinner for the family.  

But now that community is gone. Derbyshire-Bulgar had her mobile home moved Nov. 2. An axle broke during the trip, leaving the mobile home disfigured.  

“Now our roof looks like a tin can popped open,” she said.  

She said the house was dragged about a quarter of a mile before another rig was able to transport it to her new property in Smith Valley. 

The bent walls and broken roof left the home uninhabitable, so Derbyshire-Bulgar and her husband have been living in an uninsulated garage on their property for two weeks. The colder nights have only worsened matters. 

“This whole experience has been horrific,” she said.  

Fixing the home’s walls will cost $15,000 and a new roof will come in at $8,000. Moving the mobile home totaled $5,200. She is unsure of the cost to repair the interior and is fundraising to pay for the fixes. 

When purchasing the home in 2021, she said it needed a complete renovation. 

“My husband worked countless hours on that home to fix it. Now we’re starting back from square one,” she said, teary-eyed. She said she spent her retirement savings on revamping and relocating the home.  

Derbyshire-Bulgar's husband suffers from stress-induced seizures and has been in and out of the hospital since the eviction.  

“He’s not even a functioning human being at this point,” she said. “It puts everything on me because we don’t really have family locally to rely on.”   

WITH MOST of the former residents gone, the festive holiday season shared among members of a lively community has withered.  

“It’s just like when you walk into a store that’s closing, it’s just a hollow feeling is what it is,” John said.   

The loss in sense of community has been difficult for Debbie. “I’d walk out to the dumpster, and I’d talk to people and wave at people when I come into the driveway. But now, jeez. I don’t know anybody that lives here now.”   

Residents felt like their homes had slipped out from under them overnight, and what was left was an uncertain future of where they’d end up and where their neighbors would too.   

“People need to be aware of what’s going on in this valley,” Debbie said. “Be thankful for what you have. Don’t take for granted the next day. Just live today like it could be your last.” 

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and junderhill@dailyinterlake.com.  

    New mobile homes on trailers at the entrance to Spring Creek Mobile Home Park in Evergreen on Tuesday, Nov. 19. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider