Low-Income Housing Stirs Up El Rio

It is an aging subdivision of modest single-family homes, where the smell of freshly harvested strawberries and the low rumble of freeway traffic permeate the air.

It is also an area that has long been neglected, its mainly working-class and Latino residents say as they point to the neighborhood’s notorious flooding problems, absence of parks and poor police response.

And it is here, in a tiny fragment of El Rio that lies inside the city of Oxnard, that a developer has proposed building a 94-unit low-income apartment complex.

Approved Thursday night by the city’s Planning Commission, the project now goes to the City Council.

The El Rio residents who would find themselves neighbors of the project have not set out the welcome mat. Planners estimate that the development, which would lie on five acres of vacant land on Vineyard Avenue between Collins and Stroube streets, would house about 300 people.

“We want affordable housing, but we don’t want such a high density of people,” said 49-year-old Ray Amaro, an ex-fieldworker and former resident of the La Colonia barrio who has lived in El Rio since 1965.

“There are going to be problems,” Amaro said. “We’ve lived it. We’ve experienced it. Give it two or three years with so many people, so many children, and you will have a project-like existence.”

The negative reaction of Amaro and others in an area that is about 65% Latino--and where most residents earn about $10,000 below the county’s median income level--has taken the project’s supporters aback.

They say it is those objections, from people traditionally among the most ardent supporters of the disenfranchised, that are most disheartening.

Yolanda Benitez, superintendent of the Rio School District and the daughter of migrant farm workers, has led the district’s opposition to a project that would bring yet more children to an already overcrowded elementary school.

Clara Ramos, a 42-year resident of El Rio who was installed last month as president of the Latino advocacy group El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, has suggested in public meetings that the development be built somewhere else.

And people from the neighborhood of all ethnic groups have packed public meetings bearing a symbol of their ire--a badge with a red slash through an apartment building.

“It is sad to me and extremely disappointing in this particular situation that a lot of the people who live in the neighborhood that surrounds this project are in fact from the same background of the people who will live there--especially farm workers,” said Eileen McCarthy, an attorney with the Oxnard office of the California Rural Legal Assistance Migrant Farmworker Project.

“People are sympathetic to and recognize the need for affordable housing, but they feel that the project is simply not a good fit with the neighborhood,” McCarthy said. “Unfortunately, that’s what everybody seems to say.”

Battle Continues

That the Not In My Back Yard syndrome should raise its head in El Rio is a source of frustration for project proponents and some city officials. If not El Rio, supporters wonder, then where can a badly needed low-income housing project overcome the stigma that accompanies such a label and garner enough support to be built?

The homes that would be provided by the five two-story buildings set amid trees, play areas and a basketball court are badly needed, both opponents and proponents agree.

Like many Ventura County cities, Oxnard has fallen behind in providing low-income housing to its residents, officials concede. But El Rio residents object to a project in their neighborhood that appears to be attempting to fix the city’s poor record in one fell swoop.

Nevertheless, it is the undeniable need for low-income housing that appeared to sway a split Planning Commission that narrowly approved the Vineyard Gardens Apartments on Thursday night on a 4-3 vote before a similarly divided overflow crowd.

Worried developers offered to scale down the project during the debate, but that became unnecessary when Commissioner Joseph Burdullis--who held the deciding vote--finally expressed his support.

“I am personally not willing to sacrifice 28 units of affordable housing for another strip mall on Vineyard Avenue,” he said.

However, the fight is not over.

The City Council must also approve the project, and a hearing is tentatively set for Aug. 11.

Supporters say Oxnard would violate federal and state law by not approving the development. Residents threaten litigation if the project is approved.

It is the preservation of their neighborhood--not the exclusion of lower-income people--that residents believe they are fighting for.

More asphalt and concrete will exacerbate existing drainage problems, residents contend.

More vehicles will worsen already busy traffic, causing safety problems for schoolchildren on Vineyard Avenue and neighborhood kids who will be forced to dodge cars heading to a freeway onramp.

More people will also aggravate other problems, from crime to a lack of parks.

But the project’s backers believe they have answered the environmental concerns.

The apartment complex would bring fewer people to the area than a commercial development that was approved but never built on the site.

The project would neither improve nor worsen existing drainage problems, developers say.

And the development’s density would be less than state law permits and about the same as a luxury condominium project, they say.

“I feel like all the environmental concerns raised are really just a way of saying we don’t want an affordable housing development in our neighborhood,” said project planner Richard Bialosky. “It’s the traditional NIMBY response.”

Not so, residents say.

Quality of Life

Their concerns are those of people worried about their environment and quality of life, they say, rather than the complaints of bigots.

“This is not a race issue or a minority issue,” said Gil Regalado, who lives four blocks from where he was born 69 years ago. “We know what we have in this community. El Rio is not prejudiced in one shape, form or another.”

Still, it is clear that the issue has pitted people who often have much in common against each other.

Thursday’s hearing featured sometimes wrenching testimony from people such as Susan Ramirez, who said that living in a complex where two-bedroom apartments would rent for $510 a month would give people like her a chance to move up the economic ladder.

“This is just an opportunity for a place to live because where I live right now it is $800 for a two-bedroom,” the Oxnard resident said. “We would like the opportunity to save [money], so we can be homeowners like a lot of people who are against this project.”

Commissioner Rudy Liporada appeared touched by such speeches, remembering that he also shared close living quarters with six family members when he first came to this country.

“For those people who say, ‘Please don’t put it here,’ I say, ‘Maybe you were lucky you were ahead of the project,’ ” the Filipino immigrant said. “I think we have to share, because we are all human beings.”