Mobile home park residents lower their armor in rail trail fight, for now
Last week, when mobile home park residents in Capitola announced their intention to thwart the county transportation authority’s effort to survey sections of their lots, it marked the latest escalation in a dispute between the mobile home park’s owner, residents and the government over who has the rights to swaths of land occupied by residents but technically owned by the government and needed for the Coastal Rail Trail project.
Yet, with the weekend came deescalation, and residents announced Monday that they would relent and allow the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to survey the mobile home lots that encroach onto the RTC’s property line.
However, a longtime resident of Castle Mobile Estates, Cami Corvin, assured me that “there is still a lot of fight ahead.” But what is this fight really about?
As is often the case, money plays a starring role.
No one seems to disagree that the RTC owns the land in question — a grassy stretch bisected by old railroad tracks, which adjoins the back fences of the Castle Mobile Estates and Blue & Gold Star Mobile Home parks — or that some of the parks’ mobile home lots encroach onto the RTC’s property. And for the past several decades, no one seemed to care: The property was vacant and without vision. But the recent push to develop a passenger train and parallel hike and bike trail changed that, and in January 2024, the RTC announced it would come to collect what’s theirs.
Enter: the money. The RTC told park residents who lived on the problem lots — many who are seniors and low-income — that they were responsible for the cost of relocating their fences, sheds and, in some cases, entire mobile homes. Early estimates from the RTC put these costs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, completely out of reach for residents who say they had no idea of the property line issue when they bought their homes.
So, who should bear this cost? Well, Millennium Housing, the Costa Mesa-based company that owns land beneath the mobile homes at Castle Mobile Estates, brought in local attorney Ed Chun, who has argued that historic land deeds afford the park’s owner the rights to the encroachment. If he is correct, then Millennium and/or the individual residents of its mobile home park could altogether avoid the costs and the need to relocate.
The RTC, understandably, disagrees, as the alternative could mean abandoning its current plans for the Coastal Rail Trail and passenger train, a multiyear project that has already cost millions and will likely require billions to finish.
Neither Millennium nor the RTC appears willing to budge on who owns the rights to the encroachment. The question may end up in court, and its answer could determine who is left holding the bill for relocating property. The RTC said last week it was forming an ad-hoc committee of Capitola City Councilmember Gerry Jensen and County Supervisors Kim De Serpa and Manu Koenig — the latter two are known rail skeptics — to brainstorm ideas for how the government could provide relocation assistance to park residents.
OF NOTE
A blow but not a knockout: 90.3 KAZU, the Monterey Bay’s National Public Radio station, is set to lose about 10% of its funding after Congress approved President Donald Trump’s proposal to end federal funding for the public broadcaster. My colleague Wallace Baine has that story.
San Francisco’s homeless busing program stalls Pellerin bill: Central Coast Assemblymember Gail Pellerin’s bill to ban governments from shipping their homelessness problems to other California communities was inspired by a Santa Cruz feud from last summer. However, the proposal was put on ice after a San Francisco legislator worried it might impact his city’s own program to do just that.
Planning commission OKs six-story Mission Street development: In a unanimous 4-0 vote, the Santa Cruz Planning Commission said the 67-unit proposal, proposed for 1811 Mission St., could move forward. The project, designed by local architecture and development firm Workbench, will replace three one-story houses along one of the city’s major corridors.
POINTS FOR PARTICIPATION
Capitola City Council to reschedule its Coastal Rail Trail update: The Capitola City Council will meet on Thursday, July 24, but one of its most anticipated items of business — an update on two hotly contested segments (10 and 11) of the Coastal Rail Trail — will be postponed until a meeting in August.
ONE GREAT READ
Is America ready for the next war? By Dexter Filkins for The New Yorker
Reporting from Ukraine — where artificial intelligence and rapid technological advancement have given the country’s smaller military an asymmetrical edge in its war with Russia — the great combat reporter Dexter Filkins questions whether the U.S. is prepared for the next frontier of war.
Just a decade ago, that question might have been unthinkable for a country with such advanced firepower and vast resources. But Filkins argues that in an era when Ukraine is inflicting most of Russia’s losses with $500 drones that churn out at 1,000 per day, the U.S. strategy of spending billions of dollars and several years building warships, stealth jets and missiles might be outdated, and could make the global superpower vulnerable.