LITTLE BOSTON — Residents of Ravenwood Mobile Home Park on Hansville Road were a bit shocked late last month after receiving notification that they would have to vacate the property within the next year.

Officials with the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe agree that the aging park has outlived its viability and have decided to replace it with a newer development.

“We are closing the mobile home park to allow room for a commercial strip between the store site and the (Point No Point) casino,” said Lynn Good, operations manager for the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s Development Authority. The development authority is the business arm of the tribe.

Good said the park is no longer economically feasible for the tribe and that maintenance there has become a serious problem.

Ravenwood, which was built in the late 1970s, is just one part of the development area that includes the casino and a new convenience store expected to be constructed this summer, explained Harry Fulton, a project manager for the economic agency.

The development authority has given residents a deadline of February 2004 to move out and find other housing.

Agency director Phil Dorn said the word about the park closing is nothing new and that the development authority had informed its residents that Ravenwood would be closing. The tribal council recently made it official and the authority sent notices to residents about the decision late last month.

“We know this is not an easy situation,” Dorn said, noting that the agency is willing to work with residents with their future plans. “But we have been letting people know for quite a while.”

Dorn said he was also encouraging residents to work with Silverdale-based Carrot Top Housing Solutions to find other housing.

“We’ll do anything we can to help people,” Dorn said, adding that reactions from Ravenwood residents have varied.

“It’s been the total spectrum,” Good said. “We have some older people that said it’s going to be hard on and others who could care less.”

Because Ravenwood is a mobile home park, it’s “not exactly what you call a permanent place,” he added.

Even so, both owners and renters are shocked and frustrated.

“It’s a bad situation for us,” said Kathy Letson, a resident of the park for more than 15 years. “My neighbor is in the same predicament.”

Letson’s problem is that she is extremely close to owning her home. She is just three and a half years from paying off her mortgage.

“At this stage of the game, you don’t want to sell it,” she said.

Letson, who retired in 1999, said she doesn’t want to have to get a job to pay for the mortgage or downsize to a one bedroom apartment, when she has three rooms in her trailer.

“When I bought this place, I thought I was going to be here for life,” Letson said. “It’s quite disappointing.”

Eldon Heath and his wife rent their single trailer and are going to investigate the options that Carrot Top offers. Eldon is unemployed but his wife is a certified nurse assistant on Bainbridge Island.

Heath said that he hasn’t heard of any of his neighbors who have actually talked with Carrot Top yet, but said he was interested in what they have to say.

“If it doesn’t work, then we’ll apply for low-income housing,” he said.

Lewis and Sandie Mabe, Suquamish and Jamestown S’Klallam tribal members, respectively, own their double wide. They will finish paying off their mortgage this November. But once it’s theirs, they don’t know where or how they’ll move it.

“We have no place to move it to and no means to move it,” Sandie explained.

The couple has lived in the trailer for 17 years said they knew something was going on when the development authority stopped offering year-to-year leases about a year and half ago and went to a month-to-month payment plan.

“When they stopped doing leases, we knew something was going down,” Lewis commented.

Noting it would take $6,000 to move their trailer, the couple was expecting to stay at Ravenwood for life, Sandie said.

“This is my retirement home,” Lewis said.

“If we knew we’d have to move it, we’d never moved it up here,” Sandie added.

The couple is looking at trailer parks near Suquamish, but Lewis said the Port Madison Reservation won’t accept trailers. They are also looking into low-income housing.

As for what exactly will be going in place of the park, that is still up in the air, Good said. The group has discussed building a recreational vehicle park, a restaurant or multiple family housing units, but it’s too early to decide on anything, he added.