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Community of people down on their luck in danger of being shut down

4 years 9 months 4 weeks ago Sunday, May 19 2019 May 19, 2019 May 19, 2019 10:33 PM May 19, 2019 in News
Source: WBRZ

LIVINGSTON PARISH- Just a couple minutes off Frost Road in Livingston sits a patch of land with about a dozen trailers.

"It's just a bunch of people, normal, everyday people trying to get by," said Tabitha Snyder, who moved there with her husband when she had nowhere else to go.

"It's helped me stand on my own two feet," she said.

The woman who owns this land is Kathy Barnard. She's been taking in people like Tabitha for 30 years.

"I've tried to help them because they have nowhere to go. I mean they'd be out in the streets with nothing. I have fed these people; I have let them stay free; I have bought their children Christmas gifts; I've bought them groceries; I've tried to do everything that I can," said Barnard.

But now, Livingston Parish is threatening to shut them down.

According to parish law, having more than one trailer on a piece of property makes it a trailer park. Trailer parks have to abide by a litany of rules that the parish says Barnard's community isn't following. including having proper sewage and electricity.

Barnard and Snyder say they have been trying to get the community up to code and communicating with their council rep.

"The story it changes," said Snyder. "One minute it's because we're a trailer park, the next is because we have too many infractions and we don't have the right sewage and we don't have this and we don't have that."

If they can't make it in the three day time frame the parish has given them, they don't know what will happen to them.

"Ms. Kathy is trying to do good and trying to help these people. I just want them to stop messing with us. we're not doing anything wrong. we're just trying to live,"

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