Residents Unsure Where to Go After Buena Vista Mobile Park

Written by Claudia Cruz

A future in Palo Alto looks more uncertain as each day passes for residents of the Buena Vista Mobile Park community.

"There's supposed to be a fee for your home and a fee for your relocation," said FG Cope III, a 21-year resident of the community, who retired from a job in sales and marketing. "I wouldn't be able to move into any place that's as reasonable as it's here."

But Cope and others at Buena Vista appear resigned to whatever fate has in store for them when the owner of the property, Toufic Jisser, gets the okay from the City of Palo Alto to start the eviction procedure of the nearly 115 units—both mobile homes and studio apartment units—on the premises. Jisser hopes to sell the property to Prometheus Real Estate Group.

They are "capitalists and this is a free enterprise," Cope said, as he stroked his Midnight, his black Labrador Retriever. "They have every right to do what they want."

What does concern Cope and his friend Sione Fehoko is that so many of the residents work in the area and their kids attend local Palo Alto schools. For what the Jisser's plan to offer—nearly $31,000 per home including relocation costs—they'd have to search south of San Jose, like Gilroy Fehoko explained.

"Many here disagree with proposed payout," Fehoko, a resident of Buena Vista since 1993, said and added that he'd moved there the convenience and the schools. "Many don't want to pull their kids out of the school."

"We never planned to get rid of the place. We don't know what we are going to do next," he said. "It's like when you plan what restaurant you'll go to eat at by how much money you have in your wallet. Same with getting a new place."

"Though the housing value is going up, the wages aren't," Sione, a general contractor, said.

However, Jisser's application with the city hit a snag when it turned out the application to remove the residents was incomplete, the San Jose Mercury news reported. Apparently the application didn't specify where within a 35-mile radius residents would be able to find comparable rentals.

Fehoko, who lives in Buena Vista with several family members, doesn't think he'd be able to move his home. He's wanted to make some upgrades to his unit, but before he spends the money he wants to "wait and see."

But as long-term residents of Buena Vista Fehoko and Cope don't think Jisser will change his mind, particularly because according to them the properties sewer and plumbing system are in dire need of repair.

"Where are we going to go?" Cope said.