Lesson Plan : Oxnard Offer of Home Maintenance Training Offends Latinos

A city plan to start teaching public housing residents in Oxnard how to take better care of their apartments has infuriated some community leaders and residents who see it as an insult to the city’s poorest Latino families.

Residents at Colonia Village, Oxnard’s largest housing project, said the city’s maintenance workers have a lot of nerve to criticize their work habits by asking them to take a course that includes training in such household tasks as changing light bulbs, cleaning refrigerators and unplugging toilets.

The city’s maintenance workers could use some lessons themselves, the project’s residents said. They accused the city of lagging behind schedule so badly that some people have had to wait eight years to have their houses painted--only to have shoddy work done.

“I’ve painted much better than the job they did on my home,” said Maria Fernandez, whose kitchen paint is already beginning to flake off after city workers painted it last year. “They’re the ones who need a course.”

One La Colonia leader charged that the plan, titled “Self Help,” is racist and implies that public housing residents are ignorant.

“Frankly, I’m surprised the city would consider such a program,” said Carlos Aguilera, president of the La Colonia Neighborhood Council. “It’s unfortunate that they feel the Mexican people need housekeeping skills. What do they think, that the people in public housing are pigs and slobs?”

The planned program, set to begin next January, will involve a two-day, eight-hour training course at a practice facility replete with a refrigerator, stove, toilet and other standard household equipment.

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“We just want to show them what type of cleaners to use, so they don’t use steel wool on a refrigerator and scrape off all the paint, that kind of thing,” said Rick Shear, Oxnard’s superintendent of maintenance for housing.

City housing officials said that many public housing residents simply do not know how to perform rudimentary household tasks and that the program is needed to save them from incurring costly maintenance fees for elementary work.

But Aguilera disagreed.

“They’re really trying to say that if things aren’t going right for you, that if you’re living in public housing, you’re less of a person, you’re dirty,” said Aguilera, who has several family members living in the city’s Colonia Village housing project.

Not every public housing resident thinks the plan is offensive, however.

“Some people live like slobs, and it infringes on other people,” said Michael Arriaga, president of the tenants’ association for Oxnard’s 100-unit Pleasant Valley housing project. “I think some people maintain their animals better than their homes.”

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But most residents at the 430-unit Colonia Village on Thursday said they are more than capable of doing minor repairs and proper maintenance on their homes--if the city will only let them.

Oxnard does not allow people living in public housing to do even small handiwork. City officials want to allow project residents to do minor maintenance work, but feel that the course is needed first.

The wood beneath Herlinda Lopez’s kitchen counter has decomposed so badly that tiles and pieces of wood are crumbling onto the floor. She called the city’s maintenance department six years ago, asking for help. They have yet to arrive, she said.

“If they can’t handle the work, they should let us find someone to do it,” said Lopez, who still cooks in the kitchen for her husband and two children. “If they gave us the materials, we would do it. But they don’t give us anything, and they charge us for everything.”

Oxnard maintenance workers demand fees for all their work--even for drilling holes in apartment walls so residents can hang pictures, said Homero Martinez, president of the Colonia Village Tenants Assn. He said the rate per picture hole is 50 cents.

Martinez said he and others would like to start their own handyman business to service the project, but they lack the money to get started.

“I mean, how hard could this be?,” Martinez said, pointing to a slumping fence. “A child could do it.”

City Council member Andres Herrera said the planned program should be seen as a positive way to encourage home maintenance and repairs, adding that he might stop by himself.

“I guess some people would take offense to being told how to maintain their homes,” Herrera said. “But as a landlord, you have to make sure your tenants are keeping up your property, and I think that is the intent here.”

The planned program would be voluntary for all current residents, but required of anyone applying for public housing after January. Shear said it was aimed at easing the overburdened housing maintenance department, which has only 16 employees to perform repairs on the city’s 780 public housing units.

“We’re not going to tell people how to clean their apartment,” said Oxnard Housing Programs Manager Bernard Carn. “That’s not the intent. It’s to inform them how to keep things in good order and from breaking down.”