SANTA CRUZ -- They call their piece of Santa Cruz a hidden gem just steps from the heart of downtown with price tags reminiscent of the early 1980s.
Residents of El Rio Mobile Home Park, a 5-acre neighborhood tucked at the north end of Pacific Avenue along the San Lorenzo River, drummed up more than $100,000 of their own funds and rallied support from the city and state to buy the park for roughly $2 million from a Los Gatos investment firm in 1988.
Through $1.3 million in grants and loans from the city's Housing and Community Development division and $540,000 from the California Mobile Home Park Assistance Program, the residents were able to purchase and renovate the park.
Today, El Rio residents say the money and effort then were worth the peace of mind and sense of community they have now as one of the last affordable mobile home parks in Santa Cruz County.
"That's how I'm able to stay in Santa Cruz," said Ted Baer, who's lived at El Rio since 1976. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have a chance."
The 90-unit park will celebrate its 20th anniversary as a cooperative Feb. 23. It's a milestone for the entire community, residents and city officials say, because El Rio is the only low-income mobile home park in the city. De Anza Mobile Estates on the Westside and Clearview Mobile Home Park on West Cliff Drive are owned by corporations and lost rent control provisions in the late 1990s, though some residents locked in low rents that only go up when their home is sold.
"Affordable housing is a general problem in the city," Councilman Mike Rotkin said. "We can't afford to build affordable housing at the price of the units that are already there. Without preserving El Rio, it'd be a huge loss for us."
El Rio residents went to great lengths to buy the park when they discovered it had become a prime candidate for future development in the early 1980s.
Rather than risk being evicted, they pooled personal savings and lobbied city leaders to help their cause.
"You have to work to preserve economic diversity in the city," said Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, a member of the City Council when El Rio residents bought the park.
"It was a way to protect affordable housing near the downtown," he said. "People still stop to thank me. It made a difference."
El Rio is a mobile home park with character. Many of the homes were manufactured in the 1950s and '60s. Some are made of aluminum and others are fading from their original light pink and mint green paint.
The park is appealing for people with small incomes. El Rio mobile homes sell in the range of $49,000-$179,000, prices unheard of in an area where the median price for a single-family home hovers around $740,000.
"I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have my home here," resident Anna Brooks, 51, said. "I call it my 400-square-foot mansion."
As a cooperative, each resident owns a share of the park. The cooperative membership fee is $2,700, according to Warren Reed of the John Steward Co., which manages the property.
Residents elect a board of directors to make major decisions. They pay monthly assessments of about $250 each instead of rent to cover utilities and general maintenance around the park.
Residents can earn credit equivalent to $10 an hour for doing community service for the co-op and apply up to $20 toward their monthly assessment.
"Co-ops can be very complicated and difficult to survive," Reed said. "This is one of the few co-ops that's worked. That's due to a lot of people working really hard." |