The Living Nightmare at Buena Vista Mobile Home Park in Palo Alto
A story told by a 25-year resident is outrageous, even for this town
BACKGROUND: The City of Palo Alto joined Santa Clara County in 2017 to buy the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park and avert its closure. Residents and politicians heralded the deal as a major victory for the community, specifically for the low-income families living there. The Housing Authority promised to preserve and upgrade the mobile home park so that the 400 residents could remain. Since that time, many of the mobile homes have been demolished, and residents have left–or were forced out. The mobile home park now has less than 270 residents. The 117 families living there in 2017 dropped to 93 in 2019 and to 77 in 2023. Now, the County Housing Authority announced that a massive redevelopment plan was already underway. Sadly, things aren’t that wonderful for the residents there.
Story Submitted by Michael H.
People were frightened, me included. We've lived here for 25 years. We felt safe and secure in Palo Alto; my wife and I are both honorably discharged veterans of the United States Military. Gina was in the United States Army, and I was in the United States Air Force. We both volunteered. I am retired from the physics department at Stanford University. Gina still works at Stanford and has three years until she retires.
It seemed like the SOBs that now own Buena Vista had a plan all along. Whether they did or not, it sure looked that way. What I'm about to write is all true. I have the receipts, plus a video of the place we had no choice but to move into. They told us not to worry, that “it's just temporary,” but that was four years ago.
I’m going to share with you how we were intimidated, bullied, put in fear of being homeless, etc.
It began when we had to pay a tow truck driver from Bill's Towing in Mt. View $200.00 so they wouldn’t tow my vehicle from where I had always parked it for the last 25 years. Later, I also had to pay Bill's Towing $350.00 to get my wife's car out of their impound lot. I have receipts. Both vehicles were parked legally, right where we had been parking them since we’ve been here.
The Manager told me that since I am disabled and have state of CA plates, I would have to park in the disabled parking area over by the bathrooms. The bathrooms were about half a football field away from my front door. Rather than complain and be labeled a troublemaker, I just followed the Manager's instructions. My disability has to do with my ability to walk and weight bearing, since a horrible car accident. The doctor told me not to lift anything more than 10 pounds or walk more than a few hundred feet. My right ankle swells, so I have to wear different shoes for each foot. The Manager knew this; I told her.
"Here's a form you can fill out," she said, handing me a form from the Santa Clara County Housing Authority. It was a form for Reasonable Accommodation. So, now I have to ask for permission to park right where I have parked for the last 25 years. How convenient is that?
One night, maybe 9:30 or 10:00, I took my trash out to the dumpster. It's no big deal; I do it all the time. At the dumpster, a security guard, a young fellow with a flaming tattoo of fire coming out of his shirt and up his neck.
"Do you live here? I need some form of ID,” he asked me. It was as if I had committed some crime.
"Hey, man, I'm just taking out the trash," I told him.
He tried to intimidate me by the way he took my picture and made sure I could see he was wearing a sidearm, which I later found out was a stun gun.
While those kinds of things were going on, I spoke with my neighbors about it. People, in their own way, were frightened as well but told me to just let it go. They said the Managers are looking for ways to evict as many people as possible. True or not, that's what was being said around the park back then.
The Manager told me our place needed to be inspected. The inspection came with a pounding on the door, not just a friendly knock but a loud pounding. I let them in; I had no choice; there were at least four of them. They did their inspection and left. About a week later, we got paperwork in the mail telling us that our home of 25 years had failed the inspection for the following reasons:
1) There was no cover plate on the wall outlet. 2) The roof was not attached to the trailer. 3) The mobile home we live in needs to be anchored to the ground, as per CA statute. We were given seven days to comply, or our trailer would be removed from the property at our expense.
With everything that was going on, we were freaked out and didn’t know what to do. We weren’t sleeping, and we felt like, any minute, we would be put out on the curb. At the last possible moment, they posted a condemned sign over our trailer. I believe that they thought this would scare us and get us to up and leave, but it did not; there was no place for us to go.
It was a Friday, and suddenly, the shoe was on the other foot. They screwed up; in California, you can't evict someone on trumped-up nonsense and on such short notice. So, we were put in an abandoned cabin unit and told it was temporary until new units came to the park, at which point we would be allowed to somehow purchase one.
The temporary unit they put us in had been vacated three years prior. It was not habitable. The tenant who had lived in this unit had three large dogs. The place has central forced air heating that we cannot use until the heating ducts are cleaned of dog hair and pet dander. There was also no hot water, no working toilet, three broken windows, and evidence of termites: many termite wings on the floor, on the counters, basically everywhere.
By the way, our trailer was just that—a trailer—the type of trailer that people hook their car to and go on vacation. Our travel trailer was inspected as if it were a mobile home, which it is not. The write-up, which I have a copy of, tells us that we are in violation of the rules. Apparently, a mobile home must be anchored to the ground, as per California statute. I looked it up. The rule is for mobile homes, not travel trailers; we lived in a travel trailer, as many residents have for decades. And they decided to try to use that against us and try to evict us.
TO BE CONTINUED…
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Wow, this is terrible and so sad.
The place looks so empty when I drive by.