Toledo Free Press
Riverside Mobile Home Park series
Stephen Zenner’s pictures show snapshots of the lives of people uprooted from a Toledo, Ohio, mobile home park. In the photographs, people sort through mementos or load overflowing boxes onto moving vans. One photo shows pets sleeping on a shared bed at a hotel. Another shows someone holding a broken piece of a sewer line. A photo captures a pile of rubble — the remains of a mobile home park city officials declared uninhabitable, forcing residents to find new places to live.
The razing of Riverside Mobile Home Park followed years of residents enduring broken sewage systems, rodent infestations and many other unsafe living conditions stemming from the neglect of an absentee landlord.
In images and text, Stephen Zenner captured the nuances of the situation and the people who pulled together as conditions in the mobile home park worsened, ultimately facing housing insecurity.
“This is stunning and moving documentary photography, giving us an intimate view of people who are being devalued and discarded by absentee property owners and uncaring and unseen government bureaucrats,” a judge said.
The photography includes intimate portraits that “are powerful and moving,” a judge said. “And because the story and the photos offer a glimmer of hope, the reader can’t help but feel inspired by people working collectively to survive and care for each other.”
Read the Winning Work
Condemned: The plight of Toledo’s Riverside residents Nov. 17, 2025
The emptying of Riverside Mobile Home Park Nov. 20, 2025
Life after Riverside Jan. 3, 2026
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