An Uncertain Future : Low-Income Moorpark Tenants Face Eviction From Housing Deemed Substandard, Unsafe
They sit across the street from Moorpark City Hall--14 squat shanties with leaky roofs, exposed wiring, doors that do not close properly and cinder-block walls cracked and open to the outside.
The shacks have become low-rent homes for about 60 people, working families too poor to afford something better.
But now, two of the homes have been deemed substandard by city inspectors, and more inspections will follow. The landlord, rather than make the necessary repairs, has begun to hand out eviction notices.
The evictions come at a time when Moorpark, which has the highest rents in the county, is struggling to build more homes for the working-class families who live there.
But city officials say there is little they can do to stop the forces driving tenants out of the shacks across from City Hall.
One such tenant is Luis Navarrete, 40, who lives with his wife and four children in one of the homes recently inspected. With his home labeled uninhabitable, Navarrete received a notice to move out.
“It looks messed up from the outside,” Navarrete said about the home, with his nephew interpreting. “But inside it’s quite nice.”
He is crossing his fingers that the landlord and the city will work out some solution that will allow him and his family to stay in their cramped quarters.
His three daughters crowd into one bedroom, while he, his wife and their 7-year-old son sleep in the living room. The back bedroom is left vacant--it is too drafty and cold, he said.
Navarrete has worked hard to keep his family and his home together.
His coarse, heavy hands are evidence of more than two decades of manual labor, including work most recently at a concrete pipe company in Moorpark. The home’s jury-rigged repairs are a testament to his efforts to make the place livable.
Now he hopes that his family won’t be cast out from the close-knit group of families that lives in the homes. Many of the families are related, and most come from the Mexican state of Michoacan.
“Moorpark is Michoacan, U.S.A.,” said one of Navarrete’s neighbors.
Whether Navarrete can remain among his compatriots is out of his hands. He must wait for the decisions of others--the landlord, lawyers, building inspectors, City Council and local charity groups--as they hash out his fate and that of his neighbors.
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He hopes the city will give landlord Lynne Scaroni of Somis more time to make the repairs. The landlord, he speculated, could then change her mind and decide to put some money into fixing up the homes. Navarrete says he’d even be willing to help.
At the very least, he is hoping for more time.
“Don’t evict us at least until school is out,” he said, adding that if they choose to evict his family from their home of four years, he will need time to find another place, and perhaps the city could help.
The experience has made him much more cautious about what he says. And where he was once welcoming to strangers, now he is not eager to show off the inside of his home, he said. Not wanting to rock the boat, he says he needs to ask permission from the landlord first, and the landlord is not eager to discuss the problem.
City officials, however, are willing to talk.
“The tenants are always the victims in situations like this,” Assistant City Manager Richard Hare said.
The problems are so severe that city officials have become concerned about the tenants’ safety, Hare said.
Inspectors have seen sagging roofs, exposed wiring, leaky sewage pipes, and homes that are fire hazards because they have only one exit. One of the homes backs up against a steep hill that inspectors believe is in danger of sliding.
“Hazards in two of the homes are so severe that they are life-threatening,” Hare said.
There are still 11 homes that have yet to be inspected by city code enforcement officers. Many look as if they will pass inspection with some minor code violations, one building inspector said. Some may not, the inspector said.
Scaroni told the city that she can not afford to make repairs, he said.
And the tenants can hardly afford to live elsewhere in the city.
The median rent in Moorpark is the highest in Ventura County at $866, putting most apartments out of reach of families such as Navarrete’s, said Barbara Macri-Ortiz, an attorney representing many of the families living in the homes.
Rent for Navarrete and his neighbors averages about $500, Macri-Ortiz said.
City housing officials estimate there is a need for about 450 low-income homes and apartments in the city, but according to their own figures, there are only about 25 such units in the city.
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The city is in the midst of planning to build 50 low-income townhouses a few blocks from City Hall, but it turned down a proposal by a nonprofit organization to make those rental units.
The planned development would be of little help for Navarrete and his family, who face a possible eviction within the coming weeks. And despite the low cost of the homes, once they are built it would be nearly impossible for Navarrete and his family to afford the down payment or get credit approval for a loan, Macri-Ortiz said.
“It looks a little hypocritical,” she she. “They (the city) had a golden opportunity--a piece of land, and a nonprofit willing to develop low-income rental units, which everyone agrees they need, and they choose to turn their backs on that. That’s happening right at the same time that these families are facing eviction. . . . It’s as if they are saying, ‘We don’t want poor working people in our town.’ ”
City officials disagree. The city housing project will help working families own homes, and officials have plans to build more low-income homes. The possible evictions are a safety issue.
“These are very serious code violations we’re talking about,” Councilman Scott Montgomery said. “What concerns me is that these items pose a very real threat to safety.”
Montgomery said he was worried about forcing families out of their homes, but pointed out that over the last five years the landlord had collected perhaps as much as $400,000 on the units.
“We don’t want to force these families out,” he said. “We’ve asked the landlord to make the repairs, and I believe she just made an economic decision that she can’t afford the expense.”
Feliciano Murillo, 29, his pregnant wife, Ermila, and their two young children live in the other home that was deemed unsafe. The simple square house sits right next to a hillside that the city worries could slide into the building.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Murillo, who works as a foreman in a foundry in the San Fernando Valley. “We received a notice to move out by the 17th, but the lawyer thinks the landlord might work something out. We just need a little more time here.”
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Murillo’s wife is expecting a baby in May, and his children, Jorge, 8, and Laura, 5, will be in school until June.
“This is all happening at the wrong time,” he said. “It would be really hard for us to find something else.”
Like most families, Murillo said he picked Moorpark to raise his children because it is safe and the schools are good.
“We don’t have to worry about gangs and things here,” he said. “This is our home.”
Times photographer Carlos Chavez contributed to this story.
