Sweating Out a Down Payment : Opportunity: Low-income families in Moorpark get a chance to be homeowners by doing most of the construction.

Since coming to California 17 years ago from a Mexican village named after watermelons, Serafin Sapien has fertilized other men’s crops, washed dishes that served other families’ meals and assembled Jacuzzis in which others would soak and relax.

Now, at last, Sapien has put his hands to work on something of his own: a three-bedroom house in Moorpark for himself, his wife, Maria Elena, and their four children.

“At first I thought nothing was going to happen, but now I can see it is a reality,” Sapien said recently, his satisfaction obvious as he watered jasmine freshly planted along the walk in front of the house.

The Sapiens are among 20 families that will move into houses they helped build themselves--the first phase of what eventually will be a 62-house development called Villa Campesina. An inspection last Wednesday by officials from the Farmers Home Administration, the federal agency that provided mortgage loans, was the last hurdle and enabled some to move in by Thanksgiving. The Sapiens planned to move in this weekend.

Located off Los Angeles Avenue and Liberty Bell Road on the outskirts of Moorpark, the development was sponsored by the nonprofit Cabrillo Economic Development Corp. of Ventura and financed largely through loans and grants from the federal government. It is built on nearly 11 acres purchased for $300,000 from the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and is scheduled for completion next year.

The housing project was conceived mainly as a way to enable farm workers to buy their own houses. Its name in English means “village of farm workers’ wives,” an acknowledgment of women’s contributions to their families. The three- to five-bedroom houses were sold for about $70,000 each to buyers who worked 40 hours weekly building the houses instead of making a down payment.

The tract will make but a small dent in Moorpark’s projected need for affordable housing. The Southern California Assn. of Governments estimates that the city needs to build 959 units of low- and very low-income housing over the next five years.

Once primarily a farming community, fast-growing Moorpark has been transformed into a bedroom community for Los Angeles, and its population has more than doubled to 25,000 since it was incorporated six years ago.

Yet, a significant portion of its residents cannot afford to buy the new houses being built there, whose average cost, according to the city planning department, is about $205,000. Because of the cost of housing, many families double and triple up in houses designed for one family. According to an updated analysis of housing included in the city’s general plan, about 250 households are “overcrowded.”

The maximum annual income a four-member family could earn and still qualify for Villa Campesina was $35,000, said Karen Flock, project manager. The Sapiens said their yearly income is $14,000 from Serafin’s job driving a fertilizer tractor for an Oxnard vegetable grower.

Their monthly mortgage payments should amount to about $300--less than the $424 a month the Sapiens paid to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Oxnard. That made Serafin, a charming man with an easy smile, smile even wider than usual.

But much sweat and labor was traded for Villa Campesina’s relatively low payments: Families approved for the project had to contribute at least 40 hours in labor weekly during the 10 months the houses were being built. Plumbing and electrical work was subcontracted out to professionals, Flock said, but the future residents of the development poured the cement foundations, raised their houses’ wooden frames, laid the roofs and floors and painted walls inside and out.

For Serafin Sapien, 35, whose muscular arms bear witness to a lifetime of hard work, the required “sweat equity” made an already stressful period for the family even more difficult. Maria Elena, 29, was pregnant, so the construction work fell to her husband alone, and he had to do it after finishing his regular, full-time job.

Sapien described a typical day through a translator: He would rise at 5 a.m., be on the tractor by 6 a.m. and often work 10 or 12 hours fertilizing broccoli fields. If he finished by 6 or 7 p.m. and it was still daylight, he would put in a couple hours at Villa Campesina. He often returned home at 9 p.m., then started over again at 5 a.m.

Adding to the stress, the Sapiens explained, was what doctors feared was a malignant mole on Maria Elena’s back, discovered during her prenatal care. The mole was found to be benign after Maria Elena underwent surgery for its removal.

Sapien also spent every weekend working on Villa Campesina--from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays--and his children started asking why he never spent time with them anymore. At one point, he said, his cumulative exhaustion led to dizzy spells while working under the sun. Even with all of his hard work, Sapien fell short of the 40-hour labor requirement and neighbors pitched in to help complete the quota, said Teresa Cortes, a Moorpark community leader who will also live in Villa Campesina.

When the Sapiens visited their new house last Sunday, it was immaculate and empty, smelling of fresh paint, linoleum tile and new carpeting. Sun poured through bare but gleaming windows offering a distant view of Moorpark’s Peach Hill and high school. The house’s rooms were small, and it lacked amenities such as a dishwasher and microwave. Yet, it was well-constructed and finer than anything their families had in Mexico, the Sapiens said.

Serafin Sapien came to the United States with his father and two of his sisters in 1972; the rest of the 13 family members followed later. They came from a small village called La Sandia, which means watermelon, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

Maria Elena Serafin and her 11-member family came from Tlaxaxalca, in the state of Michoacan, in 1971. The couple grew up on the same street in Oxnard, and they were introduced to each other by Maria Elena’s brother.

Although they have survived the hardest part of obtaining the house, the couple still worries about tight finances over the next few months. Their first mortgage payment was due immediately, and property taxes will be due in December. The family also needs a refrigerator, as well as other appliances and furniture.

Still, those practical issues took their place behind dreams as the couple spoke of their children’s future and a lifetime in a house of their own. Unlike many Southern Californians, who see real estate as a way to turn a quick buck, the Sapiens are mostly interested in putting down roots.

Sitting cross-legged on his living room carpet, Serafin Sapien said he plans to live in the house “a lo mejor hasta que me muera”-- “probably until I die.”