Suit-Able Housing
The little community off Hueneme Road is just a timeworn collection of battered shanties done in by decay and neglect.
But Salvador Ferreira, a 35-year-old strawberry picker who moved out of the 1930s-era housing compound three years ago, knows that is about to change.
His life will, too.
As a result of a three-year legal battle and subsequent settlement brokered earlier this year, plans are underway to raze the 21 ramshackle houses on the south Oxnard property and build a community of single-family homes and apartments exclusively for farm workers and dedicated to the late labor leader Cesar Chavez.
“It’s like a dream come true,” said Ferreira, one of eight former tenants who filed a lawsuit in 1997 seeking reimbursement of rent and other damages from the property owner because the units were not properly maintained.
After winning a judgment totaling nearly $400,000, the tenants reached an out-of-court settlement in March, in which they each received $10,000 and the land was sold at a cut rate to Cabrillo Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit builder of affordable housing.
“I look at what has happened and it’s like something impossible,” Ferreira said. “We will have housing not only for ourselves but for other farm-worker families in need.”
As currently envisioned, Villa Cesar Chavez will consist of six single-family homes and 52 townhouse apartments. The homes will be sold at reduced prices to Ferreira and some of the other plaintiffs, transforming many of them into first-time homeowners, while the apartments will be rented to local farm-worker families.
That is a far cry from when Ferreira and others lived at the property, a time when raw sewage flowed from broken pipes, rain leaked into the small wooden houses and rats and cockroaches had their way with the place.
Farm-worker advocates say the new project will help chip away at the desperate need for affordable housing in Ventura County, especially among field laborers who often find themselves dangling from the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
Moreover, they say the legal victory could help shed light on the abysmal conditions under which laborers often are forced to live, while drawing attention to the need to create better housing opportunities for farm-worker families.
So impressed were members of Cesar Chavez’s family at how the housing was created and the many people it would serve that they readily agreed to lend his name to the project. It was the first time since the 1993 death of the United Farm Workers union founder that such permission has been granted for a housing project.
“Cesar worked for over 30 years to improve the working and living conditions of farm workers and their families,” said Andres Irlando, executive director of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation. “This new development is a fitting tribute to his legacy.”
Residents Battle for Repairs
The tenants on Hueneme Road didn’t set out to pay tribute to anyone.
All they wanted were repairs made to the weather-beaten shanties, set on a muddy compound bordered by a rusted pair of railroad tracks and industrial buildings, less than a mile from Ormond Beach.
The encampment was slapped up six decades ago to house the area’s burgeoning immigrant farm labor force and remained a settlement for that population over the decades. Its low rents and proximity to the fields drew Alfonso Villegas and his family in 1989.
The 36-year-old pesticide applicator said that although his one-bedroom unit was in poor shape when he moved in, and little maintenance occurred during the time he was there, rent was only $400 a month. That had plenty of appeal to the father of six.
According to court records and an interview with Villegas, the owner of the property--HR Inc., owned by Larry and Pauline Rodarte--routinely ignored complaints about plugged sewer lines, leaky roofs and faulty wiring.
Villegas said he complained several times to the landlord and the property manager about broken windows and rotted floorboards and backed-up sinks and toilets. He said wind and rain seeped into his unit through the roof and windows and that rainwater formed large pools in common areas and underneath the houses, which sat on concrete blocks about a foot off the ground.
Moisture and mildew were ever present, Villegas said, ruining clothing, bedding and other personal items. Mounds of trash and discarded furniture around the perimeter of the property were a breeding ground for rats and other vermin.
“We would ask for these problems to be fixed, but the landlord would say it was our problem,” said Villegas, adding that tenants took to calling the place “Little Tijuana.”
Fed up with the lack of response, Villegas wrote a letter in July 1996 to the Rodartes formally asking them to make repairs. He also sent a letter to Oxnard code enforcement officials, who inspected the property and cited the landlord a few months later for several code violations.
Days later, Villegas, Ferreira and several other families received eviction notices, a move they believe stemmed from their complaints.
“It became very sad and very ugly here,” Ferreira said. “None of our concerns were taken seriously. All we wanted was justice for ourselves and our families.”
The Rodartes could not be reached for comment. But in a 1997 interview with The Times, Larry Rodarte said he had spent thousands of dollars on repairs and maintained that the tenants were evicted for being “loud and abrasive and urinating . . . in parking lots.”
The tenants turned to the Channel Counties Legal Services Assn. to fight the evictions. Barbara Macri-Ortiz, an attorney with the Oxnard-based legal-aid program, lost the first round in court when a judge allowed the evictions to proceed. But on appeal, another judge agreed to vacate that ruling in mid-1997.
Around the same time, the city of Oxnard was pressing its own code enforcement action against the property owners, and housing officials began relocating the tenants to subsidized housing because of the substandard condition of the Hueneme Road units.
That is also around the time Macri-Ortiz filed the lawsuit on behalf of the eight former tenants and tapped the expertise of Ventura attorney David Shain, who brought the muscle of his high-powered law firm--Ferguson, Case, Orr, Paterson & Cunningham--to bear.
“I’m from the East Coast. I saw plenty of slums in the inner city, but I’d have to say this was right up there with anything I had ever seen,” said Shain, who recently won the prestigious California State Bar President’s Pro Bono Service Award, based in part on his work in this case.
“It was legitimately a horror,” Shain said. “I wanted to do what I could to help.”
Working together, Shain and Macri-Ortiz won the default judgment in 1998. And when the attorneys had trouble collecting because the property was transferred to a third party, they brought another lawsuit that eventually forced the out-of-court settlement earlier this year.
The settlement was signed on March 31, Cesar Chavez’s birthday, and the eight plaintiffs each received $10,000 days later. Most have put the money into a trust to go toward a down payment on the homes when they are built.
Just as importantly, the tenants won the right to buy the property, or designate a buyer, for $360,000--substantially less than its estimated value of $800,000 to $1 million. The tenants gave Cabrillo Economic Development Corp. permission to buy the property with the understanding that the builder would create the housing project.
“The tenants had a real community out there. That’s why they have said they would really like to go back if we could just get them some decent housing,” said Macri-Ortiz, who during her decade-long tenure at Channel Counties has fought a number of similar legal battles to create affordable housing.
“Now we’re looking at putting them in two-story buildings where they’ll have a view of the ocean,” she said. “I think it will be a real tangible success story, once they’re able to touch the walls of the homes they’ll move into.”
Of course, there is still a long way to go. With a $400,000 grant from the city of Oxnard, Cabrillo was able to recently purchase the 4.2 acres and start planning the development.
Now the trick is to scrape together as much of the $9 million construction costs as possible, so that the housing is affordable to farm workers.
Toward that end, Cabrillo housing development director Karen Flock is seeking to tap a range of resources from tax credits to farm-worker housing grants. Flock said she also is considering asking low-income housing developer Habitat for Humanity to help build the single-family homes.
Flock said some of the people currently renting the houses could be offered an opportunity to move into the new development.
“We’ve worked with community groups before, but this is definitely a very special kind of situation,” said Flock, adding that she hopes to submit development plans to the city early next year. “There’s a real opportunity here to do something that is of real benefit not just to the people who will live there but for the community as a whole.”
Cautious Optimism Greets Project
Members of the surrounding community already are taking a long look at the project.
Sylvia Preston, chairwoman of the adjacent Cypress Neighborhood Council, said she has concerns about the density and design of the project and has been meeting with Flock and others to iron those out.
“I believe strongly that whatever happens on that piece of property should be very attractive to kind of change the flavor of Hueneme Road,” she said. “I don’t oppose at all the development by Cabrillo, I would just like to see something very visually attractive.”
Neighborhood council member Ralph Ramos, who owns a farm labor service across the street from the proposed project, said he believes that Cabrillo will transform the property from an eyesore into a point of pride for the community.
“The project will really help the place out,” he said. “And there’s definitely a need for this kind of housing.”
The need is great. According to a first-ever report card issued in May by the Ventura County Council of Governments, affordable housing is at its lowest level since 1992. That is not news, however, to Salvador Ferreira and Alfonso Villegas.
Walking through the old housing compound last week, the two men visited the units where they used to live and talked of the deficiencies that existed.
While it’s true that the tiny community has steadily improved since they moved out, they could see past the patchwork and repairs to a day when the small wooden houses would be replaced with decent and affordable housing for farm-worker families like theirs.
“Sometimes I drive by with my children and they see how it is now and talk about how one day it will be beautiful housing,” Villegas said. “This property is going to be beneficial not only to us, but to many people who are in the same situation as us.”
