Imagine how disheartened the adults and children residing at the Syosset Mobile Home Park must be this new year, 2008, when they realized that their town, the community in which they have lived, paid taxes, grew up in, gone to school in, have their children now going to school, shopped in, and made many friends in, wake up to find that they stand alone in their fight to remain in their homes. Believe me it is not a good feeling.

It is true we do not own the land, and yes we did know that when we purchased our homes but the public has to know that the former management told each and everyone of us, both residents living here 30 years and the ones who purchased recently, that there was nothing to worry about; this would always remain a mobile home park since it was "grandfathered" in as such. We are the ones who were misled, we are the ones who need the town's assistance in helping us remain a mobile home park, a park which has been in existence for at least 80 years.

We have secured our own attorney and we are fighting a millionaire in the form of STP Associates LLC and one Larry Rush and his partners. They see our mobile home park as just "valuable" land in Syosset, land to be developed and turned over for a profit, they do not see "people."

It is a sorry state of affairs when the Town of Oyster Bay becomes the Town Without Pity.

Randi Portnoy

A Syosset Mobile Home Park Owner