Residents Fear Renovation Means Relocation : Oxnard: An $11-million program to repair public housing units is about to begin. Some families will be permanently relocated.

Lined with asbestos, enveloped in lead-based paint, the cracking walls of the Colonia Village housing project show years of neglect.

So do the rotting, termite-plagued kitchens, the dilapidated bathrooms and roofs, and the slumping fences surrounding the 40-year-old buildings.

But later this month, Oxnard housing officials will launch a massive five-year, $11-million renovation program of the city’s 530 family public housing units. They will begin on Sept. 19 with a particularly run-down section of Colonia Village known as Felicia Court.

“We have known about this for a long time, and we have wanted to do something about it,” said Oxnard Housing Director Sal Gonzales. “We just haven’t had the money.”

While the work is being done, residents will be relocated from their homes, and many are worried that they will never be allowed to return.

Their fears may be justified: Oxnard officials are using the opportunity to evaluate who belongs where in the city’s weathered web of public housing. They are encouraging families to accept federal Section 8 housing vouchers, which would allow them to rent apartments elsewhere in the city.

“This is an opportunity to readjust the people of those buildings,” said Ruben Andrade, who is in charge of the relocation. “In some cases, the (changes) will be permanent.”

Confused about their future, and uncertain about who will be living beside them, the 100 families who live on Felicia Court say they don’t trust city officials.

Carmen Ramirez of Channel Counties Legal Services Assn., who is representing the tenants, said that Oxnard housing officials failed to inform residents of what would happen to them until recently, exacerbating the tenants’ mistrust.

“People were in an uproar,” said Ramirez of a meeting between housing officials and the tenants last month. “One lady stood up and said: ‘My kids are starting school in a few weeks. I need to know when this is going to happen. I need to know where to receive my mail.’ It wasn’t some abstract thing. It had to do with where people were going to sleep at night.”

Oxnard housing officials maintain that they have been forthright with the residents from the beginning. The restoration will be a building-by-building effort, and each family will be moved to other public housing for six weeks while the work is performed, Gonzales said.

“People will either move into other public housing or into the Section 8 program,” he said. “We are working to make the relocation as easy as possible.”

Most residents will be allowed to return to their original homes, Andrade said. But families who have become too large or too small for their old apartments will be placed in more appropriate dwellings, he said.

City housing officials hope to persuade 20 tenants to sign up for federal housing subsidies available under the Section 8 program.

Ramirez said that most families wish to return to their old apartments. At her urgings, Oxnard officials are drafting a document that will outline the renovation program’s goals and rules.

“I’m not sure there are going to be 20 people who want (Section 8 vouchers),” Ramirez said. “The people of Felicia Court like their community. They are very involved and want to stay where they’re at.”

Herlinda Lopez said she has refused a request by housing officials to voluntarily move to another city public housing project.

“I don’t want to move from here, but our opinion does not matter,” Lopez said. “We’re being forced out of here. They’re the authorities, they have the money, and we have to do what they say. We’re the Mexicans lying beneath their feet.”

Antonio Nunez lives on Felicia Court in a decaying three-bedroom apartment with his wife and six children. Despite rampant vandalism and gang problems, he prefers to stay in his neighborhood, with his neighbors.

“People have a sense of family and community here on their blocks,” said Nunez, “They want that to stay the same.”

But Nunez acknowledged that the renovation is long overdue.

“Now that they’re going to do this I hope they do it right, not a superficial job like they have done before,” he said. “There are apartments here not fit for dogs.”

Rosa Castro said she repeatedly notified maintenance workers about the peeling lead paint above her shower. But, she said, city workers never did anything about it--a common complaint among the project’s residents.

“I’ve lived here for 30 years, and many of the things that are bad now were bad then,” said 60-year-old Eusebia Yanez. “These problems were here for years before they started doing anything.”

Housing officials say that they have never had the resources necessary to fix all that is wrong with Oxnard’s public housing, and this relocation project will be no exception.

“It would probably take $50 million to do all the work that needs to be done throughout the city,” Andrade said. “But there’s no way we can get the money for that. We only have $11 million, so we are going to do all we can.”

Standing outside her family’s current home, Griselda Barreto said that she and her neighbors are resigned that the renovations are out of their hands.

“We’re counting on their word,” Barreto said. “We’ll see if they can live up to it.”