Utility project forces Palo Alto mobile home residents to move

María Martínez is packing up her life into boxes — well, most of it. Not all of her plants will fit, and by her conservative count, she has more than 65 of them.

She, her partner and her two English bulldogs will be moving from their mobile home in Palo Alto, where they have lived for nearly two decades, into an apartment in Mountain View sometime in the next few weeks. The temporary relocation will allow for major utility upgrades at the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, and Martínez is one of dozens of people who will have to move.

“The move is stressful,” she said in an interview at Buena Vista, a mobile home park at 3980 El Camino Real, in the Barron Park neighborhood. “How do you pack 20 years into boxes?”

But beyond the move itself, Martínez said she is very excited to see her new apartment. It’s a one bedroom in a luxury building in Mountain View, and she and her partner will continue to pay the same rent they would otherwise pay at Buena Vista. The Santa Clara County Housing Authority, which is facilitating the relocation process, is covering the difference in rent for everyone who is forced to move.

Buena Vista residents only have a rough estimate of how long they will be away from home. The housing authority has stated it may take eight months, but unforeseen delays could extend the timeline — much like how the move-out was initially meant to take place in February. In addition to Mountain View, some other residents are moving to Menlo Park or somewhere else in Palo Alto.

“Aligning regulatory and compliance requirements has necessitated a longer than anticipated timeline,” Housing Authority Chief Real Estate Officer Flaherty Ward said in an email. “We are now in the final stages of this process and are preparing to move forward with construction.”

While Martínez does not have any children in school, nearly half of the households at Buena Vista do. Catalina Solano, whose two children attend Fletcher Middle School and Barron Park Elementary, is also moving to an apartment complex in Mountain View. Her family’s scheduled move-out date is in mid-September.

For Solano’s child at Barron Park Elementary, what was once a 15-minute walk or bike ride is now a 5-mile journey.

To ensure that children in school do not have their education disrupted, Palo Alto Unified School District  has agreed to allow students from Buena Vista to continue attending local schools even if they are temporarily relocated to another city or county. The housing authority has said it will provide private transportation for families who will need help getting their children to and from school.

Ward said more than 90% of residents are relocated within 4 miles of Buena Vista, which allows “most residents to stay close to their schools, work, community and daily routines.”

Many mobile home park residents have their own vehicles as well, but for those who don’t, Ward said they were prioritized for relocation near public transit lines, such as Caltrain or the bus routes along El Camino Real.

Amanda Serrano, who uses a motorized wheelchair, is one such resident who mainly takes public transit. She will also be moving to Mountain View and said she was able to receive an accessible unit due to her disability. However, her primary medical clinic is in Palo Alto, and it will take longer to get to and from appointments while she is in the temporary apartment, she said.

Serrano also owns her mobile home, painted a butter yellow color with dozens of plants outside. Owners, who only rent their space from the park, outnumber those who rent the mobile home itself. As part of the utility upgrade project, the housing authority will replace Serrano’s mobile home with a new one, something she is very excited about.

There are another 14 households living on the portion of the mobile home park that is not affected by the utility project, and they will not be required to move during construction.

The repair project has taken years of preparation. In 2024, the housing authority had a plan to upgrade and replace 44 mobile homes, split the property into two and build a 61-unit apartment building on the other parcel. Buena Vista residents would have had the option to remain on site. But in October 2024, the housing authority announced it was scrapping the project altogether.

“The main drivers include an uncertain regulatory environment, rising costs associated with the inability to meet resident expectations around larger homes and larger purchase offers for their current mobile homes, and funding implications due to schedule delays,” Preston Prince, executive director of the Housing Authority, wrote at the time.

The parcel split was still approved by Palo Alto in June.

Now, new funding implications are nipping at the heels of the housing authority. The current utility upgrade project is contingent upon a state grant called the Manufactured Housing Opportunity & Revitalization (MORE) Program. About $24.5 million in MORE funds was earmarked for Buena Vista in 2023, the most awarded to any mobile home project in the first funding round.

The money needs to be spent by June 30, 2027, and can only be used for the actual mobile home park improvements — it can’t be spent on moving trucks or the new rents for existing Buena Vista residents, for example. The housing authority has estimated it will cost between $2.8 million and $3.2 million for relocation, new rents, commercial movers and travel arrangements for families with children.

The Palo Alto City Council will discuss the Buena Vista project at today’s meeting . The issue at hand is the regulatory agreement between the city, Santa Clara County and the housing authority, which was first signed in 2017 and needs to be reupped to account for the fact that the mobile home park is now split into two parcels.

To unlock the MORE funding and start construction, the new regulatory agreement needs to be signed as soon as possible, city staff wrote in a report to the council. The City Council is expected to approve the agreement today, and the county Board of Supervisors will discuss it on Aug. 25.

According to the housing authority’s timeline, construction could begin as soon as mid-September once all impacted residents move out. Given the approximate eight-month schedule for the project, residents could move back in May or early June — just shy of the MORE funding deadline.

For Martínez, one of the Buena Vista residents, her biggest hope is that the plants she can’t take with her to the temporary apartment will survive the construction.

There is also an upside. While she is in Mountain View, she will be closer to an adult school where she plans to take classes and earn a CNA certification.

Like many of her neighbors, Martínez expressed a combination of stress and excitement.