Chicken factory makes a deal with neighbors facing eviction, possible homelessness

The owners of a chicken plant in Siler City reached a deal Monday night with the residents of a nearby mobile home park who are facing eviction as part of the plant's expansion plans.

Around 100 people live in the trailer park next to the factory now owned by Mountaire Farms, which a decade ago was one of the area's largest employers before the previous owners shut it down in 2011.

Mountaire Farms plans to bring more than 1,000 jobs back to Chatham County, and it has received millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded incentives to do so. But some of the politicians who had approved the money were angered to hear complaints from neighbors of the plant.

Facing growing public scrutiny, the company has reached a deal to pay the neighbors $8,300 per lot — some of which are home to one family, others to multiple families — and to extend the date they need to be gone from May 7 until July 31.

The company had previously agreed to let the families live there rent-free until moving out, and that continues to be part of the deal.

“It takes courage for immigrant families to stand up and fight for their rights. This was the first time that these residents had spoken with the press or their elected officials," Emilio Vicente, who works for the Chatham County Hispanic Liaison and helped organize the neighbors' push, said in a news release announcing the deal.

The company's expansion plans included buying the trailer park next door to the factory, off of U.S. 64, where about 30 families lived.

After getting their eviction notices, the families realized the mobile homes they owned there were too old to be accepted at any other local mobile home parks.

Many of them had put a large chunk of their savings into buying and fixing up their homes, and they worried that they would now be forced into homelessness without financial aid.

The residents of the mobile home park are largely Spanish-speaking immigrants and their children. Some have been in the mobile home park only a few years; others have lived there for decades. Many of them moved to the area to find work at the local chicken factories, before finding themselves fighting the same company where they may soon be applying for jobs.

"Even though they don't have an obligation, they should do the right thing," Natalia Lopez, a 72-year-old longtime resident of the park, said in an interview last week, before the families and company struck the deal. "... They should think about how this might leave us on the streets."

At a recent Chatham County Board of Commissioners meeting, the commissioners — who gave $1.6 million to Mountaire in 2016 — criticized the company for its handling of the situation.

"Give these people an opportunity to walk away from this travesty with some dignity and a roof over their heads," commissioner Karen Howard told two Mountaire representatives who attended the public hearing.

This story was originally published March 27, 2018 at 10:09 AM with the headline "Chicken factory makes a deal with neighbors facing eviction, possible homelessness."