Building a Sense of Community on a Foundation of Hard Work

There is nothing particularly striking about the 62 simple single-story homes that make up Moorpark’s Villa Campesina--no dramatic geography, no lush landscaping.

What is special about this neighborhood is that the people who live here built it themselves from the ground up.

With help from the federal government, a few private organizations, the city and the Catholic church, families who never would have been able to afford it now own their own home.

It took a lot of hard work. Each family put in 10 months of “sweat equity.” Residents poured foundations and hammered in nails in the evenings and on the weekends, putting the homes together in groups--each family worked on its own home and helped to build the homes of 10 neighbors.

“Yeah, it was tough,” said Dan Harris, a 31-year-old garbage-truck driver who lives in the community with his wife and five children. “We had to work hard, but we’re the working class. That’s what we do. We just have a hard time converting that into cash.”

Coming up with enough money for a down payment, let alone a hefty mortgage bill each month, made owning a home impossible for Harris and his neighbors before Villa Campesina, said Teresa Cortes, the 38-year-old woman credited with first planning the community.

Once a volunteer with the United Farm Workers, Cortes started working on the project after being frustrated that although both she and her husband worked, they still could not afford to buy a home. And she knew they were not alone.

Fourteen years ago, at one of the first meetings she organized on building affordable homes, more than 2,000 people showed up, eager to find out how they could qualify.

Cortes contacted the Cabrillo Economic Development Corp., a Saticoy-based nonprofit group that builds housing for the working poor, and learned about a federal loan program to build homes in rural communities. It took nine years of pestering and pushing before the homes were built.

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Along the way, Cabrillo enlisted People’s Self-Help Housing of San Luis Obispo to work on the project, and Cortes helped persuade the city of Moorpark to spend federal Community Development Block Grant money to purchase a 10-acre site at a reduced rate from the Catholic church.

When the time came, more than 500 families applied for the 62 slots, Cortes said. The federal agency overseeing the grant sorted through the applications, eliminating families with incomes that were too high. A family of four, for example, could not have a combined annual income of more than $34,000.

Some families were moved higher on the list because they lived in substandard housing--in trailers or HUD apartments or crowded into one- or two-bedroom flats.

There were no down payments required. The federal agency provided the 32-year low-interest loans, which averaged about $65,000, on the homes, and People’s Self-Help Housing guided the families through the construction process.

Work on the first home began about Thanksgiving in 1989, and the last home was finished in 1991.

It was the first sweat-equity housing development of its size in Ventura County. And although it was touted as a model solution for the problem of finding affordable housing, it was never duplicated here.

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“It was everything we expected and more,” Harris said. “I don’t know why they haven’t tried to do this anywhere else.”

The only complaint leveled at the program so far is that there is nothing to prevent families from selling their homes at a large profit. Despite the loophole, fewer than seven families have moved out of the neighborhood since the development was completed four years ago, Cortes said.

Some of those homes sold for more than twice their original assessment value of $70,000.

Because the families did not put down payments on the homes and paid low monthly mortgages, they were able to turn large profits, said John Kinkead, who bought one of the homes for $170,000 in 1991.

The loan agreement only stipulates that the loan be paid off before the sale of the home. The families that moved got around that rule by borrowing against the homes, paying off their loans and then selling the homes.

Some of the families moved because of necessity, said Deidre Collier, a project manager for People’s Self-Help Housing. But in general, the families have stayed because their circumstances remain the same, she said. They still are poor and would have a hard time buying a home even if they were to sell for a profit.

“Plus they’ve invested eight to 10 months to a year of working practically every moment that they aren’t sleeping or working their regular jobs,” Collier said. “They have a lot of themselves invested into these homes. They don’t want to give that up.”

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The residents’ time investment included working closely with neighbors. In the process of building each others’ homes, the families in Villa Campesina got a chance to go beyond back-yard greetings and nods. They got to know who lived next door.

“From the start we’ve known each other,” said Lionel Reyes, a 30-year-old trucker, of the families living around him. “They’re good people.”

The close working relationship has carried itself over into watching out for each other and the neighborhood, Reyes added.

“We’re really no different from the people that live uptown,” he said. “But when you put in 40 hours of work with anybody, you can’t help but get to know them. You also get to know who they know. If we see someone come here we haven’t seen before, we get suspicious. So we do watch out for each other.”

Soon after the last homes were finished, members of a local gang started parking their cars in a dead-end street near the homes and drinking in the abandoned field between the neighborhood and the Arroyo Simi. Cortes and a few of her neighbors asked them to leave. They refused, so Cortes and the other neighbors got a few more neighbors, and they forced the youths to leave.

“This is our home,” she said. “When you work all those days, weeks, months and years for your home and someone tries to destroy it, well, you could just punch them.”

Since then, there hasn’t been any trouble.

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The only thing left undone is a park planned for the empty field in the back of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, dozens of children wind up playing soccer and tag in the street and dodging cars when parents come home from work.

“Everybody’s got kids here,” said Reyes as his 5-year-old daughter, Sabrina, stood by. “They need a park to play.”

The residents have waited four years for the park, which is supposed to include a playground and a basketball court. The park still needs the approval of the Ventura County Flood Control District, but the neighbors expect that before the summer. It would complete their neighborhood, they say.

“The park would be the cherry on the whipped cream,” Cortes said.