Mobile-park refugees feeling ‘abandoned’
Their home was called Journey’s End, the very name promising a well-earned respite.
For nearly 60 years, the mobile-home park in Santa Rosa was a haven for low-income seniors. One of the owners was a former resident, and he took good care of them. The rent was cheap. The pool was clean. The city’s hospitals were down the street.
Then the Tubbs Fire barreled through, row after row. The onslaught lasted 40 minutes, perhaps less, killing two residents, leveling 121 tightly packed
homes and melting the newly updated gas and electric system. The 40 units that survived the flames were red-tagged, contaminated by smoke and asbestos.
Four months later, those residents are caught in limbo, their plight seeming to confirm fears that the most vulnerable victims of the historic Wine Country firestorm would be cast furthest behind.
Maybe the park that sits along Highway 101 on Santa Rosa’s northern edge will reopen, maybe it won’t. For now, no one knows: not the park owners, not the city mayor, certainly not the tenants.
Meanwhile, many of the displaced seniors are struggling to pay for temporary lodgings or moving out of the city altogether, they said in interviews. They feel forgotten by the officials who pledged that housing them was a priority.
All they know is that a thick chain-link fence blocks the park’s entrances and a security guard patrols the perimeter. They aren’t allowed in. They’ve received a single letter, dated Dec. 13, from management. The correspondence did not say what might come next.
“The toughest question for us to answer right now is, what will become of the park?” co-owner Ramsey Shuayto, whose family owns the property, wrote in the letter. “We have struggled mightily with that question.”
The family probably won’t have the money to rebuild on its own, the letter said. Shuayto is considering partnering with a developer or selling the land. In any event, he has stopped responding to calls, directing people to Evans Management Services of Santa Cruz.
“People would love to know, is the park going to reopen?” said Greg Evans, president of the management company. “I give them the best answer I can, which is that there are a lot of moving parts to the equation for what the future will hold.”
It could take years to clean up the toxic waste and rebuild streets and sewer lines. Some residents hope to return, but acknowledge they might not live long enough to see that happen. Others have become part of the firestorm’s diaspora, moving across the state to more affordable spots.
“It is purgatory,” said Theresa Udall, 83, who is living in a tiny apartment that costs twothirds of her monthly income in the community of LarkfieldWikiup, a few miles north of Journey’s End.
“When the fire first happened, videos of the park up in flameswent all around the world. My son in Hong Kong saw it. Everyone was talking about us,” Udall said. “Now, nothing. We feel really abandoned by those in authority. We just want to go back to our homes.”
While a long recovery has started in places like the nearby Coffey Park neighborhood, Journey’s End remains paralyzed in ruin after the Environmental Protection Agency found asbestos contamination near the park’s former laundry room. It’s not even clear yet whether the standing homes will be salvaged.
The loss adds to an affordable-housing crisis that Santa Rosa and other Wine Country cities faced well before the wildfires ignited Oct. 8, killing 45 people across Northern California and ruining nearly 9,000 structures.
Sonoma County’s median home price hit $615,000 in December, up 17 percent over the previous December, according to the consumer data firm CoreLogic. The rental vacancy rate averaged 2.3 percent in 2016, compared with 3.3 percent in California and 5.9 percent nationwide, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Seniors are the county’s fastest-growing demographic and are uniquely hurt by the crunch, county officials say. At Journey’s End, residents were paying about $500 a month, well below Santa Rosa’s median rent of about $1,600 for a one-bedroom unit.
The city doesn’t know the status of all of the Journey’s End residents; it’s not keeping track of them. But The Chronicle, which interviewed more than a dozen, found that many moved to extended-stay motels or to trailers with federal assistance money, while others are staying with family or friends.
Even if the park is rebuilt, some said, paying market-rate rent for years in the interim could drain the savings of people who are by and large retired and living on Social Security.
Shuayto, the owner, returned $79,000 in rent — about $490 per household — to his tenants in October. The Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, a park owners group to which Journey’s End belongs, gave another $250 in disaster aid to each household. But that money won’t go far.
“Even if everyone in the park got paid through insurance, they all won’t be able to save the money and wait for the three years it would take to repair their homes,” said Kendall Jarvis, a disaster relief attorney with Legal Aid of Sonoma County, a nonprofit that provides counseling to low-income families. “They’re in the notknowing phase, which is scary. They’re very marginalized and could be one check away from homelessness.”
Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey said he hopes the city can keep affordable housing at Journey’s End. How that will happen, he is still unsure. There’s no city zoning mandate requiring lowincome housing on the site.
“As far as the city is concerned, we need housing, specifically affordable housing for seniors,” Coursey said. “Journey’s End has units the city needs. We are hoping to see at least 161 back in that spot.”
Because the property is private, the city cannot step in unless the owners agree. Coursey said the park could become a public-private partnership, with the rebuilding subsidized by grants or donations. Legal Aid of Sonoma County workers and city officials plan to meet with residents Saturday to discuss possible outcomes — only the second meeting the city has taken part in since the fire.
“We haven’t had a community meeting with the residents there since a few weeks after the fire,” Coursey said. “I’ll take ownership of that. I feel badly that the folks there feel forgotten.” It’s already too late for residents like Clarisse McCoy, 85, who moved to Redding to live with her daughter after her mobile home was red-tagged. There’s no going back now, she said. She doesn’t have the money it would take to fix the place.
McCoy and her late husband bought the unit at Journey’s End 25 years ago. They put in double-pane windows and installed Italian tile on the floors. She would wave hello to the neighbors when she walked her dog in the morning. McCoy knew all their names.
“I feel like I’m living in a motel room,” she said. “When you barge in on another family, they have to change their routine, and I feel it. They go to another bedroom to have private conversations. I don’t belong here. I don’t know where home is anymore.”
Others are set on moving back, including Pat Moser Crisco, 67. She had a double-wide with a Japanese maple out back and a swing hanging from a branch. In the summer, she picked blueberries and pomegranates in her front yard or drank cocktails on the screened-in porch. It felt safe, and she rarely locked her front door. “It’s my home,” she said. Her current abode, a travel trailer on a piece of rented land on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, is temporary. After the fire, donations poured in, and she used the money on the trailer’s down payment. But she gets sick of having to dump the blackwater. She wants to get back to her community, to the neighbors with whom she played bingo on weekends and ate sugar cookies on Christmas.
“I really want the owners to make a decision,” Crisco said. “I am hoping the city will help. A lot of people just got in their cars and drove off without contact. Not me. I sent some emails with suggestions to the City Council. They never respond.”
Vic Oteri, 89, also wants to spend his final years in Journey’s End. Until that happens, he’s keeping an eye on things from across the street. He and his partner, Sam Willis, 85, are at an Extended Stay America hotel on the opposite side of Mendocino Avenue, where insurance will foot the bill for up to two years.
They pass time watching television and calling their old neighbors on their landline. They don’t text.
It was only a few years back, in 2013, that Oteri and Willis bought a brand-new unit. It was probably the most expensive one there, Oteri said. The home didn’t burn, and they were able to grab some of their possessions. Later, someone broke into a nearby storage shed where those few belongings were stashed and looted it.
Now, the view of Journey’s End from the hotel is static. The rubble remains, and very few people come and go. Not even they can get in. The groceries in Oteri’s fridge and the garbage on the curb are still there, rotting. He’s too old for this, he says.
“We are anxious to get back, but we have no indication of what’s going to happen,” Oteri said. “How are we supposed to make plans if everything is uncertain?”