Mobile home park gets a redevelopment plan
Just after a tall new mobile home was wheeled into place at Buena Vista park, neighbors Sabrina Ramirez and Isabel Ramirez peered excitedly through the windows.
“Two stories!” Isabel said. “Can you imagine?”
For the two women, the sleek, multiroom tiny home — complete with loft, full kitchen, bathroom and bay window — is a dream. Right now they live in dilapidated trailers and mobile homes that are showing their age; most have leaky roofs, plumbing problems and can't be moved anymore.
For the first time in years, Sabrina and Isabel, who are not related, saw what the future holds for Buena Vista Mobile Home Park — one of the few such parks left on the Peninsula where most houses fetch well over $1 million. Santa Clara County Housing Authority officials this week revealed plans for redeveloping the mobile home park to include a new apartment building and new housing options for current residents, like the model mobile home that rolled into the park Thursday.
While the agency's purchase of the site in 2017 preserved the last bastion of housing affordability in Palo Alto, the past six years have been very disruptive to the Buena Vista community, and many families have left.
The housing authority recently told the Palo Alto City Council that it would take time to ensure the least disruption to residents during the construction. The agency intends to keep two-thirds of the site as a mobile home park and the other as a 60unit apartment building. The 10-unit motel where the new apartments will be built is set to be demolished in the next month.
Current residents such as Sabrina and Isabel, who own their homes but rent a lot at the park, will have the option to finance a new mobile home with the housing authority, taking advantage of grants, state and county funds intended to make the burden on residents as small as possible.
“Our goal is to not have mortgage payments for households,” said Flaherty Ward, director of real estate for the county Housing Authority. “We're going to buy their current home from them, and if they choose, we can layer financing on to make it affordable for them to get a new home.”
While Sabrina is excited about the new developments, Isabel — who has lived at the park with her husband and three daughters since 2007 — isn't as convinced. She said it's been a difficult and long journey to reach this point.
“My roof is about to collapse, I can see it,” Isabel said. “There are still problems here. But where am I supposed to go? I have to wait.”
Isabel estimates that about 25 families have left in recent years as most of them just couldn't keep up with the constant changes.
As early as 2012, the park's previous owners, the Jisser family, wanted to sell the property in Palo Alto's Barron Park neighborhood to a residential developer interested in the prime location, a move the city initially authorized. But that would have displaced about 400 residents — mostly low-income Latino individuals and families — and following lengthy appeals and legal maneuverings, a judge in December 2016 told the city it needed to calculate relocation costs for tenants before the park could ever close.
Fearing they'd be forced out of the one of the few affordable pockets of Silicon Valley's most expensive real estate, park residents gathered forces and were eventually joined by neighbors, who together created Friends of Buena Vista.
Group members and allies often packed a series of meetings held to discuss the park's fate, and their efforts snowballed into a campaign that attracted national attention.
In 2017, the park was finally saved when the Jisser family accepted a $40 million offer from the city and county. Two years later, the federally funded Santa Clara County Housing Authority announced plans to revitalize the property.
Caritas Corp., a nonprofit that specializes in improving and preserving the 20 or so California mobile home communities, was brought in by the housing authority to stabilize the park's operation and make needed improvements to security and aging facilities.
In 2020, the agency also bought 18 brightly colored prefabricated homes for specific residents. Since then, not much has happened on the site, but residents say the park has come a long way from a decade ago, when it was notorious for vandalism, blight, broken equipment, rats and cockroaches.
Ward said the housing authority still has a lot to do: Current blocky renderings aren't final, and the apartment building and mobile home setup is subject to tweaks.
The housing authority is also counting on more people leaving the park — or choosing to give up homeownership to become a renter at a new apartment — in order to finalize its redevelopment plan and make sure people get the homes they need. Many residents who showed up to the Palo Alto council meeting this week were shocked to find that some large families may have to share a small space. But Ward said the goal is for everyone to end up in a home that fits the size of their family.
That kind of miscommunication has been common. Isabel said she hasn't been able to attend the parkwide meetings in the middle of the week because she works late shifts, and others don't go to meetings and are left in the dark. She blamed the housing authority for not communicating enough with residents.
Recently elected Palo Alto Councilmember Julie Lythcott-Haims also wants the housing authority to focus on communication.
“I would suggest that when you come back with the next update that you bring along to the podium somebody from the Buena Vista community who is partnering so closely with the housing authority that we can have confidence that the residents' points of view are reflected in the presentation,” she said. “We want to be really sure that what we're hearing and deciding upon are in fact what the residents of the community feel best about.”