Riverview Estates will be last low-income project until
Hollister builds sewage system
Maybe it’s the nicest present Maribel Banda Cortes and her
husband, Javier, will ever give, a place their two young daughters
to call home, a room waiting inside for each of them and a backyard
in which they can play.
Riverview Estates will be last low-income project until Hollister builds sewage system
Maybe it’s the nicest present Maribel Banda Cortes and her husband, Javier, will ever give, a place their two young daughters to call home, a room waiting inside for each of them and a backyard in which they can play.
Yesterday, Maribel and members of other families building their own “sweat equity” homes were doing the last bit of work as they washed the street clean with hoses and swept the water into storm drains. An breeze wafting off the San Benito Riverbed cooled them from the strong afternoon sun.
Each of the 14 new Riverview Estates homes lining American Court, tucked away near fruit orchards off Hospital Road, has three bedrooms, perfectly trimmed sod, and a neat coat of paint. The garage doors were mostly open and empty yesterday save for a few ladders and tools.
Looking through the new windows, one can see each home waits this week for its owners to bring in furniture, for sprinklers to water the new lawns, for barbeques and laughing kids to be running around.
Just a year ago, this same court was a bunch of empty plots full of weeds and rocks. But that didn’t stop Maribel and her husband from seizing what they considered a golden opportunity. The 14 families about to move into American Court competed with 500 others in a lottery for the chance to help build their own low-cost home.
The lottery was held by South County Housing, a non-profit organization that provided the winners with financing, the materials and a supervisor to help them build their own home. In return for this opportunity, the families had to make an $18,000 down payment with a year’s worth of backbreaking work.
“Basically, you don’t have a life,” Maribel said. “It’s a lot of work. But at the end you have a home, a dream come true.”
Maribel’s week days consisted of getting up, feeding the children, rushing off to work, driving to the worksite, where she would toil with the other families until dark. At day’s end, she would return home to make dinner, feeling numb from the stress of carrying so much responsibility.
“My daughter would say, ‘Mom, when are you going to help with my homework?” she said.
Even though Maribel and Javier have not had a weekend to themselves in a year, she said she wouldn’t have it any other way. From the moment they were married 10 years ago, they have wanted a home, but over time a heated housing market only pushed their dream further out of reach.
Some of the families make as little as $20,000 a year, so the $111,000 to $115,000 principal cost, not including an interest rate of between 1 and 6 percent adjusted over 33 years, couldn’t be passed up if they ever wanted to be homeowners.
Maribel is happy but knows the gift is bittersweet. After she and the other families get their keys in a formal ceremony Wednesday, due to the state-ordered building moratorium over the faulty city sewage system it will be the last time any family gets such a chance in Hollister for at least three years, and many of them are people Maribel knows by their first names.
“That kind of makes me sad, for a lot people here in Hollister are in the same situation we are in,” Maribel said. “But hopefully that will change in the future.”
SCH had two other projects scheduled to begin this year, one consisting of close to 70 units of low income housing for seniors, the other 13 self-help homes and 12 below market rate homes. The fruits of hundreds of hours in planning, design and securing financing will be either wasted or put on hold.
More than $200,000 in state and federal funding will have to be returned, and the city could miss out on years of funding from Prop. 46 – a $2.1 billion subsidized housing appropriation – if voters pass it next week.
“The hope we will be able to give them affordable housing is way back on the shelf,” said Jack Foley, who is an SCH spokesman, of Hollister residents.
That’s why Maribel said she is so lucky. As soon as they get the keys, Maribel and her husband will move in the first belongings. They have no grand plans for a pool or even a garden just yet.
“We just like our home the way it is,” she said.
