Mobile Home Mobilization
For Gayle Pezzo, it started with the snowplows.
In the fall of 2018, following a winter distinguished by the biggest snowfall in years, the town of Colchester, Vt., stopped plowing the nearly five miles of roads that snake through Westbury Mobile Home Park, where Pezzo, 72, lives. She and her neighbors were furious that the local government could simply withdraw its services and leave the park in the lurch. According to the Colchester Selectboard, the town’s five-member governing body, clearing Westbury’s roads was not the responsibility of public plows. They had decided that Westbury was a private residence — in effect, one with a long, rambling driveway that happened to shelter 250 working-class Vermont families.