Heartbreak Hotel : Oxnard: Families find new hope at the prospect of being relocated to subsidized housing from a run-down, vermin-infested building they had called home.

Clutching her youngest child to her chest and stirring a frying pan full of macaroni and powdered cheese, Eloisa Ramirez marveled at the prospect of leaving behind the junkies’ and hookers’ haven that has been her family’s home.

Ramirez, her husband and five children are preparing to move next week from a vermin-infested, 9-by-11-foot room at The Lemon Tree Motel in Oxnard into a relative palace--a subsidized three-bedroom apartment across town with a fireplace, a washer and dryer and a fenced-in yard.

“I’m still pinching myself trying to believe it’s real,” said Ramirez, 35, through an interpreter. “Here it was drunks and drugs and noise so bad the children couldn’t sleep. Over there, it will be peaceful and quiet and we can be happy.”

For years a reported den of narcotics traffic, prostitution and violence in the heart of downtown, The Lemon Tree is fast approaching a meeting with the wrecking ball. The site will be turned into a parking lot.

Since the city redevelopment agency seized the 45-room hotel on Meta Street from its owner under eminent domain on July 23, 90 tenants living in 39 of the rooms have been relocated, and the 13 tenants in six remaining units will be out by Oct. 31.

Oxnard Police Officer Bryan MacDonald, who supervised 24-hour police security at the building after the city takeover, said the motel has long been the center of drug trafficking and prostitution, and the site of numerous stabbings and shootings. The security has since been scaled back to 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. “The entire area seems to have quieted down quite a bit,” he said. “But if we leave it unoccupied any length of time, squatters may start moving in.”

The task of finding replacement housing fell to Mecky Myers, a relocation expert hired by the city. Myers, 51, moved into the manager’s apartment to oversee cleanup and convince tenants skeptical of bureaucrats that her efforts to find them better quarters were sincere.

“These people needed help badly,” Myers said. “People got up at 4 a.m. to stand in line for the one bathroom and shower. Many would go in a paper bag and throw it in the lot if they couldn’t wait.”

About two-thirds of the tenants qualified for federal housing subsidies under which they will pay 30% of their household income for rent, with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development paying the rest.

The building’s demolition is expected to proceed despite a dispute between former owner Bertha Ochoa, who was arrested after refusing a court order to vacate, and the redevelopment agency, which had offered $795,000 in compensation. Peter Kuetzing, a lawyer representing the city, said that there are $300,000 to $350,000 worth of loans and liens against the property and that Ochoa’s ownership interest is being challenged by a co-owner. A jury will probably have to ultimately decide on the fairness of the city’s offer, he said.

Lupe Soto, 38, said she is grateful for the city takeover because she has arranged to move into a one-bedroom apartment with a living room three times larger than the dreary, opaque-windowed room she and her husband have called home for 14 months. Rent for her new quarters includes pool privileges and will run about $160 per month, compared with $350 at the Lemon Tree.

“We got lucky,” said Soto, who lived for a year at the Zoe Christian Center, an Oxnard homeless shelter, before moving into the hotel. “This is an opportunity of a lifetime.”

The smell of Debra Bailey’s cooking carries from the window of the room she will soon vacate. The stench of human waste along the balcony walkway, since scrubbed clean, previously overwhelmed all other odors in the building, Bailey said.

For Ramirez, the 1,400-square-foot apartment on Campbell Way will be paradise for $350 a month. Since moving to the United States seven years ago, she said she and her family have lived in the Santa Clara River bed, in garages near Saticoy and in the Lemon Tree for the past 10 months.

Her husband, Joaquin Leon-Alatorre, is happier still, though he does not know how he will furnish the apartment on his landscaping wages. Still, he said, his 13-year-old daughter, Veronica, may yet achieve her goal of attending college because she won’t be handicapped by her surroundings.