Cary mobile home residents seek relocation aid after redevelopment sale

About a dozen Chatham Estates residents went to downtown Raleigh this week to press Toll Brothers for help with the cost of moving, after the Cary mobile-home community was sold and slated for redevelopment. The park’s 144 families, roughly 700 people in all, have been told they have six months to vacate, a deadline that has turned one of Cary’s lower-cost housing options into an urgent displacement problem.

The 27-acre site at 607 Cedar St. sits near East Chatham Street and Maynard Road, and plans tied to the property call for it to be replaced with 330 multifamily units and 97 townhomes, or about 407 homes total. Chatham Estates has long been described as one of the few remaining affordable mobile-home communities in Cary, where some residents paid about $400 a month to rent their lots. For households that have built their budgets around that number, the redevelopment means far more than a change of address.

Residents said they were first told in late December 2025 and again in January 2026 that they had six months to leave after the land was sold for redevelopment. That leaves families facing towing fees, utility shutoffs, deposits, first-month rent or mortgage payments, and the challenge of finding another place in a market where the average apartment rent in Cary is more than $1,700 a month. The gap between those costs and what residents have been paying is exactly why the relocation fight has become so charged.

The town of Cary has responded with $800,000 in relocation aid, a meaningful sum but one that still falls short of what many families will need to stay in or near Wake County. Cary also unanimously supported Stable Homes Cary in March 2024, a program administered by Dorcas Ministries that is designed to help residents remain housed or identify a next step when relocation cannot be avoided. Dorcas says it provides financial assistance, food, training, coaching and client advocacy for Cary and Morrisville residents.

The Chatham Estates dispute has also exposed the limits of local power. Cary can fund assistance, and Dorcas can help families navigate the move, but neither can stop the market forces that make the land more valuable than the homes on it. For residents who have already been told to leave, the question is not whether redevelopment will happen. It is who pays the price when it does.