Mobile Home Park to Give Homeless Families Solid Start

The city of Oceanside, knowing that unseen and uncounted homeless families huddle in cars and empty buildings in the community, has faced quiet desperation with a creative remedy.

In what city officials believe is the only project of its kind in California, the city is nearing completion of a mini-mobile home park to temporarily house homeless families near Mission San Luis Rey.

During their stay at the Gateway Family Community, which is vying with an Escondido project to become the first family shelter in North County, the families will learn everything from balancing a checkbook to building self-esteem.

When they finally leave their two-bedroom mobile abodes, they’ll be given the bedding and kitchenware they used there, just enough goods to get them started when they find a permanent home.

Although shelters are available around North County for homeless children, or adult women, or adult men, or women with children, until now there has been no living arrangement to keep family members together.

“This is a population you’d call the hidden homeless,” said Marva Bledsoe Chriss, executive director of the Women’s Resource Center, which has a contract with the city to run the 15-unit mobile home park.

Fearing transients on the streets, most homeless parents and their children prefer to keep to themselves.

“They may be sleeping in automobiles. They may be sleeping in abandoned buildings,” said Bledsoe Chriss.

It’s hard to know the exact number of homeless families here, but the Oceanside Task Force for the Homeless surveyed nearly 1,000 homeless people last December and estimated that about 30% are part of homeless families.

Although Bledsoe Chriss praised the mini-mobile home park as “a new and innovative idea,” it evolved as a practical necessity amid bureaucratic desperation.

City Housing Director Richard Goodman explored 10 sites west of Interstate 5 in Oceanside to secure existing housing for homeless families, but each location either cost too much or raised opposition from neighbors.

Finding a site was a critical condition of applying for housing funds under the federal Emergency Shelter Grants Program, which is administered by the state.

With time running out to apply for the grant, Goodman heard that land might be available at the mission a few miles from downtown. He speedily won a special zoning permit from the city, then secured a lease with the owner of the site, the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Ohio.

The lease agreement was signed in April, 1989, one day before the grant application deadline.

“Everything was in total panic,” Goodman said.

The sisters were unwilling to go beyond a three-year lease and insisted on a provision to pressure the city to eventually find another place for its homeless program. That provision would increase the $1-a-year lease fee to $350,000 annually after three years--and was what sparked the idea of using mobile homes.

“We needed something we could put out there and then take off,” Goodman said.

The city received a $200,000 federal grant and leased a dozen, 576-square-foot mobile homes, each of which can house up to eight people. In addition, the Brother Bennos Foundation, which runs a soup kitchen in Oceanside, qualified for its own federal grant and is placing three more mobile homes at the site.

The mobile home park is the newest of several steps taken in Oceanside to aid North County’s homeless population.

The City Council, convinced the problem was urgent, established the task force for the homeless, and funding was made available for people facing eviction because of a sudden financial crisis.

Meanwhile, Brother Bennos has been pursuing plans to relocate its downtown soup kitchen and develop a 10- to 20-bed emergency shelter, showers, a laundry, vocational counseling and rehabilitation.

Besides federal money, the city is spending $300,000 to staff the Gateway Family Community and contract with the Women’s Resource Center for services. Much of the landscaping and household goods are donated.

During the past two weeks, the units have arrived and been arranged in a square, with a common area in the center that will be landscaped and made into a play area for children. Large boxed trees are being planted around this tiny community, which occupies 3 1/2 acres of the 25-acre leased property.

Goodman said the mobile home park, which opens this month, is the first of its type in the state. Meanwhile, Bledsoe Chriss is prepared to launch a sophisticated program to not just house homeless families, but also to help remedy the causes of their homelessness.

Families with substance abuse or behavioral problems will not be admitted; Bledsoe Chriss and her staff look for people who show promise of regaining control of their lives.

“They’re people who can take care of themselves but have fallen on hard times,” said Gloria Valencia-Cothran, an aide to county Supervisor John MacDonald, whose district includes Oceanside. “They’re not people who simply want to live on the street.”

However, nobody expects residents to be trouble free, so a variety of services, including job training and counseling, will help families receive proper welfare benefits, learn good nutrition and health, and how to live on a budget.

“We’ll be putting everybody through ‘tenant etiquette,’ emphasizing the rights and responsibilities as a tenant,” said Bledsoe Chriss. “People need to know how to present themselves during interviews to become a tenant.”

Residents will be allowed to stay one month with possible extension to two months if necessary.

“You can’t reshape someone’s life in 30 days, but you can start to make a difference,” Bledsoe Chriss said.

Shelter for homeless families, available in the city of San Diego, is not provided in North County.

But that’s changing, and it’s an unofficial race to see whether Oceanside’s Gateway Family Community project or a family shelter in Escondido becomes the first in North County.

EYE Counseling and Crisis Services in Escondido is preparing this month to open for homeless families a six-unit apartment building that was bought by the city. Meanwhile, the North County Housing Foundation, based in Escondido, is working on a project to relocate and rehabilitate old houses for occupancy by four to six homeless families sometime this spring.

Amy Rowland, the foundation’s director, conceded that, even with the Oceanside and Escondido projects, “it’s a drop in the bucket.” However, she added, “I guess it’s a little ripple, but you feel if you get something moving, it’ll catch on.”

Back in Oceanside, housing director Goodman is already planning for what happens when the lease expires--presuming it’s not extended--at the mission. He said the city is looking for permanent sites with apartment units for families.

Although the mini-mobile home park may be a novel remedy for an immediate need, “it’s a stopgap,” Goodman said.