By Jondi Gumz
Roxanne Stanley is a third-generation local who bought her home in Capitola 17 years ago.
She was shocked when she got a letter from the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission in January, saying she has to move her home two-and-half feet out of the Santa Cruz Branch Line railroad corridor — by June 2025.
And she’s not the only one.
Roxanne Stanley lives in the Castle mobile home park in Capitola.
She says 24 homeowners are affected, with their homes and backyards abutting the rail line.
That’s not counting homeowners who live on the other side of the rail line with homes that are encroaching into the rail corridor.
“We have to be 15 feet from the track,” Stanley said.
The Regional Transportation Commission bought the 32-mile rail corridor in 2012, with this idea of providing passenger rail service with a trail alongside. Trails have been completed in the city of Santa Cruz and last year the RTC began pursuing the idea of a zero-emission passenger rail between Santa Cruz and Pajaro.
Stanley did not build her home to encroach.
She bought an existing home in the 108-space Castle Mobile Estates, 1099 38th Ave., where rent for the space for the home was affordable.
But these homes are not really mobile. They are not on wheels. They have foundations.
To move, it would cost $30,000 Stanley says, based on an estimate one of her neighbors got.
There goes half of her backyard and part of her bedroom.
There is no room to move without moving into the streets in the park.
Once the trail goes in, it will be close enough to windows of homeowners to peer in.
Ordinarily in such a situation, residents could turn to a homeowner association, but at Castle, there is no such organization.
Roxanne Stanley wants a win-win solution for the rail trail proposed to go through her backyard.
The mobile home park was built in the 1971, a fence away from the rail line, with a laundry room, no clubhouse, no pool, but within walking distance of the beach.
Abrahm Keh became owner in 1987, and in 2000 sought a $300 a month increase for space. He sued the city of Capitola to try to get around its 1979 rent control ordinance.
In 2011, Keh sold to a Los Angeles nonprofit Millennium for $8.25 million. By agreement with the Capitola City Council, Millenium agreed to set reasonable rental rates for middle-income and low-income homeowners, with rental assistance provided by the city for 10 years, and annual increases based on the cost of living.
This agreement is for 55 years, until 2066.
Stanley expects other property owners next to the rail line such as the Trout Gulch Crossing shopping center in Aptos are in the same boat. The parking lot for the stores is not 15 feet from the track.
Meanwhile Stanley has been reaching out to elected officials and RTC staff.
Her first idea: Why not push back the June 2025 deadline to ease the stress on local homeowners? One of her neighbors can’t sleep due to stress.
Her second idea: Why not relocate the path of the trail onto Brommer Street and bypass this neighborhood? She says this would make it easy to get on a bus. The RTC has proposed diverting the trail in Capitola Village from 38th to 47th avenues because the rail corridor is extra narrow.
Her third idea: She’s asked her neighbors to each write a letter to the RTC explaining their plight. The RTC has 13 members, five members from the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, one member each from the Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Capitola City Councils, and three members appointed by the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District. See www.sccrtc.org/about/commission-members/
“They’re affecting 24 lives,” Stanley said. “I don’t want to be homeless.”
