After residents told to move their mobile homes for Coastal Rail Trail, some mull legal action

Karen Anderson has lived in the Castle Mobile Home Estates park along 38th Avenue in Live Oak for more than 30 years. She expected to stay there for the rest of her life. 

However, in January, Anderson received a notice from the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission that her mobile home encroaches on land where the RTC plans to build the Coastal Rail Trail and, eventually, run a passenger train. She will have to pick up her home and move it by June 2025 or, the RTC said, the agency has the right to move it for her.

“This is my retirement, and where else am I gonna go in Santa Cruz County? Because my family’s here,” Anderson said. “It’s a huge problem.”

Like Anderson, many within these small neighborhoods have called the modest manufactured residences home for years, or even decades. As the rail trail project inches forward, the direct impact on the residents gets closer, too. Now, the RTC is figuring out how to deal with an issue that could cost the agency time and money if the project gets tangled in a lawsuit with mobile home park residents.

In late April, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Segments 10 and 11 of the Coastal Rail Trail, after the board had failed to approve the project a month prior. That cleared the way for the county to receive about $68 million in state grants toward that section of trail. At that meeting, County Park Planner Rob Tidmore said that “10 or 11” mobile homes would be affected by this stretch of the project.

The two segments total 4.5 miles and run between 17th Avenue in Live Oak and State Park Drive in Aptos. The project has been a flashpoint in recent elections and ballot measures. The Coastal Rail Trail project divides two mobile home parks along 38th Avenue in Live Oak in a more physical way: Blue and Gold Star Mobile Home Park sits to the north of the unkempt railroad tracks; Castle Mobile Home Estates is on the south side of the rail corridor. 

The area running between the two parks requires substantial construction in order to fit a pedestrian and bicycle trail next to the railroad tracks, in line with the “ultimate” trail design that the RTC and county government have committed to building. In order to make room for both features, those 10 or 11 residents could either lose outdoor space, or be forced to relocate their home or improvements to their properties several feet.

In the notice it sent to residents in January, the RTC said it had completed a boundary survey and found that some of the residences within the parks encroach on property owned by the agency. It gave residents until June 2025 to “remove the unauthorized encroachments,” or the RTC will do so and charge the encroaching party for the cost.

RTC Deputy Director Luis Mendez said that encroachments of the mobile homes vary from about 1 to 4 feet, and there might also be accessory structures and fences encroaching, too. 

Mendez said RTC staff and consultants are working to provide options for dealing with the encroachment issue to the commission. That could happen as soon as its June meeting, but might take longer. 

One possibility is to move the homes over a few feet, “which seems simple,” Mendez said, adding that the RTC is also working with the state to explore what other options could be available. “Depending on the specifics of each mobile home and the space on which they sit,” he said, “the potential options may differ.”

However, residents and the owner of one of the parks said moving the homes may be no easy task. 

Lori Carraway, vice president of Costa Mesa-based nonprofit corporation Millennium Housing, which owns Castle Estates, estimates that relocating a mobile home could cost more than $75,000. Given the age of the buildings – the park dates back to the 1970s – moving the homes could also cause damage.

“There’s a concern that trying to pull them forward will cause many other issues, not just to the integrity of the home itself, but to utilities and so forth,” she said. “The logistics of that are kind of a nightmare.”

County Supervisor Manu Koenig, whose District 1 encompasses both parks, said that the impacts on the residents could be “very significant.” He added that moving a mobile home is a challenge when many of them have been stationary for decades. “The need to move 4 feet could result in the destruction of the units entirely,” he said. “That, in turn, could lead to these residents losing housing altogether given our county’s extremely tight housing supply.”

Several residents questioned why they had received no notice about the encroachment issues from the RTC for years after the local transportation agency bought the tracks and the land surrounding them from Union Pacific Railroad in 2012. 

Cami Corvin, who lives in Castle Estates, wondered why no boundary survey or easement assessment — processes to formally determine the boundaries of a property — was done until more than a decade after the RTC purchased the rail line. She scoffed at the thought of being charged for the work of relocating her home. 

“Where am I going to stay with my dog? I’m going to lose space in my yard, and we have animals and other pets, and we’d like to at least provide them a little area,” she said. “These are our family, you know what I mean? There’s all kinds of things that people in RTC aren’t addressing.”

Carlos Marmol and his partner bought their property in the Blue and Gold park just in December, and says they were not informed of the impending rail trail project. “We don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said. “But if we had known this was going on, we would have never bought it.”

The RTC’s Mendez said that a boundary survey was not needed to purchase the rail line right-of-way, but the agency did discuss commissioning one. However, it was expected to cost millions of dollars, and the agency did not have enough money to pay for a survey at the time.

Christine Miguel bought her home in Castle Estates in October 2022. She said that she had no clue about the encroachment issue until late last year. Her house is mere inches across the boundary line.

“I’m going to have to move, supposedly. They’re going to have to split my house in half — because that’s how they have to move these houses — and move me forward 3 inches,” she said. “And you’re gonna tell me that they’re going to put this all back together perfectly where I won’t have any problems?”

Miguel has lived in Santa Cruz for more than 40 years total, relocating to Oregon before returning to Santa Cruz and moving into Castle Estates in 2022 to be closer to her grandchild. She sold her house in Oregon and put everything she had into making the quaint building her home. Sleek off-white countertops cover the surfaces of her fully stocked kitchen beneath deep black cabinets across from framed family photos and healthy houseplants. 

“I went broke to move back here, I sold my wonderful house in Oregon and this is all I could get,” she said with a laugh. “[Living in] a park isn’t great, but when you’re inside, it doesn’t matter. It’s your house and it’s a perfect location.”

Samira Totah has lived with her partner, Terry Wood, at Blue and Gold Star Mobile Home Park for 25 years and said that the project would come right up against the back of their house. 

Totah said they have few options. “We are stuck, because we can’t really sell the place since whoever would come in would be in the same position,” she said. “All our equity is still in the home and other people are still paying mortgages.”

Totah said that unlike Castle Estates, Blue and Gold’s management has been mostly silent on the matter. Blue and Gold’s management did not respond to Lookout’s request for comment.

One major question hanging over the project is who is liable for the costs of moving the homes. Koenig said it’s currently “unclear whether the liability falls on the residents, the park owners, or elsewhere.”

Based on the information the RTC currently has, the encroachments are unauthorized, Mendez said, meaning the agency “does not have an obligation to provide financial compensation or assistance to address” the issue. He added that the agency does not know if there are other parties that may have an obligation to provide assistance, such as the mobile home parks’ owners.

Carraway said that while Millennium will not pursue legal action itself, it will support its tenants who want to do just that. She pointed to the concept of a prescriptive easement, which is a property right acquired by a trespasser who uses a property for an uninterrupted period of years. 

Blue and Gold has been in its rail-adjacent lot since 1965, and Castle Estates since the 1970s. Since the mobile home parks were there well before RTC purchased the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line in 2012, and neither RTC, nor the previous owner, Union Pacific, raised an issue until now, Carraway said thinks the residents could have a point.

“I think our residents are forced to go to legal defense of their rights there, and basically say they’re not leaving,” she told Lookout, adding that in informal conversations, some lawyers have said they might have a good argument. “You can’t have a prescriptive easement against a governmental agency, but the prescriptive easement predated the governmental agency’s ownership.”

Mendez, on the other hand, said that “multiple legal counsel” have told the RTC that the law won’t allow prescriptive easements against railroads or public agencies, and no person or entity encroaching on the rail line right-of-way would have a prescriptive easement.

Some residents, as well as Millennium Housing, have raised the idea of building the 1,000 feet of trail that runs beside the park using an alternative “interim” design that would have entailed building the trail over the tracks. Carraway said that the goal is not to stop the trail, but to offer a compromise.

Mendez said that the interim trail isn’t possible at this point in any capacity. It would require the removal of the track, which would require a railbanking process with the Surface Transportation Board — an independent federal agency that regulates freight rail. He added that since the railroad operators “are not interested in railbanking,” the process would likely be contested and lengthy. The county and the RTC have committed to an “ultimate” trail design that would build the trail next to the train tracks.

Koenig also said that the RTC has hired a consultant in mobile and manufactured homes to gain a better understanding of the options available and their costs. He and his office have been communicating with the California Department of Housing and Community Development to see how setback requirements — the amount of distance required between a building and the property line — may apply.

“Whatever happens, I will advocate to minimize impacts on residents however possible,” he said.

RTC Commissioner Mike Rotkin said he feels bad for the homeowners, who have “a valid problem and complaint.”

“It’s an unfortunate situation. There are some people who are definitely feeling screwed and they’re justified in feeling so,” he said.

However, Rotkin said he thinks the park owners are at fault for the issue, and the homeowners should be confronting them rather than RTC.

“My view is that the government should try to help them do that in some way,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think RTC can pay for the home relocations, and it might not even be legal to do so because it could be an illegal use of public funds. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t provide them with some kind of legal advice or help.”

Mendez said that any delays, including those caused by issues with mobile home residents, could put the project’s nearly $68 million state grant in jeopardy. The grant is set to expire in 2026. Mendez added that the California Transportation Commission could allow extensions on the grant due to “unforeseen circumstances or circumstances beyond the control of the agency implementing the project,” but that the CTC would be the one to determine if the reason for requesting the extension is warranted.

Residents of each park, however, say they have a different plan if they can’t find a proper resolution: to join forces and pursue legal action.

“If we refuse to move, they’re gonna have to take it to court,” said Castle Estates resident Corvin. “And the plan is that we’re not moving.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.