Working Families Find Moorpark Is Beyond Their Means : Housing: Neither poor nor unemployed, some have a tough time paying the rent. Construction of affordable residences has practically halted.
She survived layoffs last week, but instead of relief, Moorpark secretary Leslie James is faced with the anxiety of finding a decent place to live.
The search for affordable housing has become increasingly difficult in Moorpark, where, according to housing activists, rents are among the highest in Ventura County.
With Moorpark’s median monthly rent over $860, some working families have found it increasingly difficult to afford living in the city, advocates say. The latest median home price there is $233,700, according to one economic forecaster.
City leaders agree that the shortage of affordable housing not only hits the working poor but people like James, who considers herself middle-class.
A secretary for a Woodland Hills defense contractor, James takes home about $400 a week. She said she simply can’t afford the going rate for a two-bedroom apartment in Moorpark.
Nabbing the two-bedroom, white mobile home she rents on Bard Street for $650 two months ago was a stroke of luck, she said. But because the trailer and the downtown plot of land it sits on have been sold, James and two of her children must find another place to live.
“Every two- or three-bedroom home I’ve seen in the city has been more than $1,000 a month,” she said. “We just can’t afford that.”
Looking for a home to rent is an all-too-familiar experience for the 51-year-old James.
Since arriving in Moorpark 17 years ago, she has had to move six or seven times, picking up stakes and relocating with the four children she raised on her own. Sometimes she had to work two jobs to pay the rent.
This time, the move will force her daughter Cheryl, a 21-year-old Moorpark College student who works part-time, and her son Adam, 19, who works at a pizza parlor, to rent rooms in the homes of friends--a choice James herself is considering.
“You expect for your kids to move out when they get older, but you never expect that they will be forced to do it,” she said. “There’s a certain amount of indignity to not being able to afford a home for them to come back to.”
Housing advocates and some residents have hurled criticism at City Hall for not doing enough to encourage the construction of affordable housing.
But city leaders say they are doing what they can.
They point to a plan to use $1.5 million of Redevelopment Agency funds to build 50 low- and moderately priced houses for sale to qualified first-time home buyers.
With the average subsidy close to $75,000 per home, critics contend that the plan to build the homes is an inefficient use of scarce city funds and will benefit only a handful of deserving families.
While first-time home-buyer programs are welcome, there is a dire need for rental units that are affordable to working families that earn $28,000 a year or less, said Barbara Marci-Ortiz, an attorney for Channel Counties Legal Services Assn., which represents several low-income renters in Moorpark.
Several proposals to build low-income housing in the city have been stopped by neighboring residents who say the developments will bring crime and overcrowding, Marci-Ortiz said.
She represents a group of 14 families facing possible eviction from a row of shacks across from City Hall. Inspectors found several serious housing-code violations and have ordered the landlord to fix the homes or tear them down.
“These are good people,” she said. “Hard-working families doing jobs that earn maybe $6 or $8 an hour. Just do the math--there aren’t many rental properties these people can afford.”
Desperate to save money, two, three and even four families will sometimes crowd into a two- or three-bedroom home, Marci-Ortiz said. Or families like those she represents will move into substandard housing that is unsafe or even unsanitary--but cheap.
“There needs to be an alternative,” she said. “The city needs to come up with some creative ways of dealing with the problem.”
Demand for affordable housing has outstripped supply throughout California, and now half of all tenants in the state are forced to spend more than 30% of their income on rent, according to 1990 U. S. Census figures.
David Aguirre, an airplane parts mechanic who has lived in Moorpark for 25 years, said that for a time he, his wife and their two children had to rent his father’s garage for living space.
They now rent an apartment in the city and are hoping to someday qualify to buy a home through the Redevelopment Agency program.
“It was tough enough for me and my wife to find a place that was affordable,” he said. “I just don’t see how those people do it making minimum wage.”
In the last five years, no rentals have been built in Moorpark, and only about 25 homes have been constructed that are affordable to families earning less than $28,000 a year, according to city figures. During the period, about 50 homes have been built that are affordable to families earning less than $40,000.
According to city estimates, there is a need for more than 900 homes that would be affordable to families in those income levels.
In Moorpark, the lack of affordable rentals has caused a litany of civic problems, said Jim Aguilera, the city’s planning director.
“The problem is that when you try to reach down to help out the very low-income earners, it simply is going to require government subsidies,” he said. “And there just isn’t money to go around right now.”
Councilman Bernardo Perez introduced a zoning ordinance this year that would have required 10% to 15% of the homes in new developments to be affordable to families with low and moderate incomes or families of four that make less than $70,000 a year. But the proposal died for lack of support from the four other council members.
Others point to the example of Villa Campesina--a “sweat equity” development that provided homes for 62 families that otherwise may never have been able to afford houses in Moorpark.
Completed in 1991, the development came together with the help of the federal government, a few private organizations, the city and the Catholic Church. But even supporters of the project say the lack of available federal funds makes construction of another development unlikely.
Families’ alternatives have become increasingly limited, forcing some simply to move out of town.
Nancy Cato, 34, who works at a barber shop about a block from where James lives, said high rents forced her to move from Moorpark to Palmdale with her four children.
“It’s just too expensive,” she said. “I grew up here. Moorpark is a great place to live--there’s no problem with gangs or drugs. It’s a great community for kids, but I’m a single mom right now, and I just couldn’t afford to live here.”
Rent for her two-bedroom apartment in Palmdale is about half of what a similar apartment would cost in Moorpark, Cato said. She pays $490 a month for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in an apartment complex with an exercise room, children’s recreation room and a swimming pool.
“If I could have stayed here, I would have,” she said. “My daughter doesn’t like her school. There are real gangs there, not wanna-be gangs like they have in Moorpark. But that’s the way it is.”
