Rising Housing Costs Squeeze Oxnard’s Poor : Crowding: The waiting list for subsidized residences contains more than 1,000 names and has been closed for several years.

Renaldo Martinez Rios is one of 1,100 laborers and fieldworkers crowded into 140 trailers at the Oxnard Mobile Home Lodge near the Pacific Coast Highway.

The $20-a-day strawberry picker and his 12-member family share a three-room trailer that is so cramped the family is forced to prepare its meals outside, next to a dusty street.

Rios would like to move. “The problem is not finding a place where we can live, but finding a place that we can afford,” he said.

In Oxnard, where almost half of the households are considered low-income, crowding among the poor is a growing problem as rapidly escalating land values dry up the supply of low-cost housing. The city estimated in 1989 that there were 6,500 overcrowded households, defined as residences with more than one person per room.

Compared to other cities in the county, “I think the problem is more intense in the city of Oxnard,” said Sal Gonzalez, the city’s housing director. “I think we have a greater incidence of overcrowding and doubling up.”

Part of the reason is that Oxnard has long been a haven for working-class, low-income families who cannot afford to buy a home. Reflecting this trend, Oxnard has the county’s highest number of low-income households (18,255)--those earning less than $24,300 a year--and the highest number of rental units (19,964).

Although Oxnard’s total of 780 subsidized housing units also is the highest number in the county, the waiting list contains more than 1,000 names and has been closed for several years. The Oxnard Housing Authority assists another 1,219 lower-income residents by allocating funds through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 program, Housing Programs Manager Bernard Carn said.

Still, critics say Oxnard has not done enough.

“All they are approving is housing in the higher end . . . They do not have a balanced housing program, period,” said Rodney Fernandez, executive director of Cabrillo Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit group that has built 427 units of low-income and farm-worker housing in Ventura County since 1975, none of them in Oxnard.

“I think the problem is very bad,” he said. “I think Oxnard is one of the communities that has done the least in the last 10 years.”

Rochelle Stephens, deputy director of the county’s Area Housing Authority, said that since Oxnard closed its waiting list for subsidized housing, the county has received 25 to 35 applications each week from Oxnard residents seeking such housing.

Housing director Gonzalez acknowledged that in recent years the city has been slow to develop affordable housing, in part because the city had difficulty obtaining housing grants from the federal government throughout the 1980s. Federal housing officials have held back the grants, saying the city had already built a disproportionately large number of such units during the 1970s, Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said the city has been approving housing projects for buyers in the high end of the income scale because developers for years have found it economically infeasible to build low-income housing.

Now, however, the city is trying to address the problem, Gonzalez said.

In the wake of complaints in central and northeast Oxnard over noise, lack of parking and the illegal conversion of garages and toolsheds into rental units in crowded neighborhoods, the city formed a committee of seven department heads in July, 1989, to study the overcrowding problem.

The committee met weekly for several months and produced a survey and two reports, which included alternative solutions to the problem for the City Council to consider. The reports focused primarily on increasing housing inspections and imposing a mandatory fine for households that violate the state housing occupancy laws.

One report suggested surprise after-hour inspections, requiring all residents to obtain parking permits and limiting the number of permits that can be issued per residence. Those recommendations are being studied for inclusion in a detailed report to the City Council.

Gonzalez also said the city recently set up an advisory panel consisting of city officials and community leaders to investigate means of developing more affordable housing.

At the same time, the outlook for increased federal aid to build low-cost housing is improving, he said. Federal officials are looking more favorably on Oxnard projects, Gonzalez said.

“Can we provide housing for everybody that wants it? No, that is not possible,” said Community Development Director Richard Maggio. “I think we are at least trying to address the problem in some fashion.”

Cabrillo Economic Development’s Fernandez said one of the prime examples of overcrowding is the Oxnard Mobile Home Lodge.

A consultant hired by the city recommended two years ago that the city relocate the 848 residents who were then living in the 5.2-acre mobile home park. The consultant, Sanchez Talarico Associates of Newport Beach, said in a report that there have been two fires at the park, one that destroyed three trailers in 1985 and another in 1987 that destroyed a metal shed being used as a bedroom.

Residents said there are now about 1,100 residents living in that same park. In one case, as many as 24 residents live in one mobile home.

“In Mexico the people are poor but at least their houses are spacious and comfortable,” said Luis Terran, a disabled fieldworker who has led a fight for better conditions at the mobile home park.

The consultant’s report said the only solution lies in finding a developer willing to buy the trailer park, close it down and build a new one elsewhere. Gonzalez said the city is working on acquiring a site for the new park.

One of the problems in addressing the crowding problem is that efforts to clean up blighted areas can imperil the poor who live there. For example, the Lemon Tree Motel on Meta Street, located in a gritty, low-income neighborhood of bars and restaurants, has been tagged by the city for demolition to make way for a public parking lot as part of a downtown redevelopment program.

Bertha Ochoa, the owner of the motel, said her 44 apartments are among the last remaining affordable housing units in the city. If the city tears the building down, she warns that almost all of the 150 tenants will have no place to go.

“It’s no palace or Holiday Inn, but it’s a roof over their heads,” she said.

Theresa Melendi, a cook, and her boyfriend, Arturo Taja, who delivers phone books, pay $320 a month to live in a one-room apartment no bigger than a one-car garage where they cook on a hot plate on a dresser and share a bathroom. But even that is better than being on the streets, she said.

Since she bought the building in August, 1989, Ochoa has fought a bitter battle to keep the city from condemning it. She has even hired a Santa Monica attorney to try to persuade a federal court judge to halt demolition.

Although city officials told Ochoa that state law requires the city to find affordable housing for each tenant that is displaced through a redevelopment condemnation project, she and her tenants remain skeptical.

“Where are they going to put us?” she said.