Modesto airport area still isn’t at top of government’s to-do list
Carolyn Milligan lives around the corner from a broken promise. Her duplex in Modesto backs up to an empty lot. Ten years ago, the city loaned $100,000 to a nonprofit developer who promised to build houses on four such lots in the airport neighborhood.
The houses were never built and the lots are still empty. On the one near Milligan’s house, a discarded couch nestles in tall grass. The ramshackle area in southeast Modesto has made frequent appearances on city and county to-do lists over the years. It never gets to the top.
The area is home to about 500 households. Settled by Dust Bowl immigrants in the 1930s, it was once known as “Little Oklahoma.” It’s still home to families hanging on to Modesto’s bottom rung. It’s mired in poverty and crime, and lacks basic services such as sidewalks and grocery stores.
Some progress has been made. There are now curbs and gutters. A park opened behind the school in 2005, built after an 11-year lobbying effort by residents. A mobile health clinic is stationed outside the school; a sheriff’s substation opened in the neighborhood in 2003.
But despite decades of promises from city and county officials, systemic change has proved elusive. Millions of government dollars that could have shored up the neighborhood have gone unspent, and plans for the neighborhood’s revival have gathered dust in city and county offices.
In 2009, Mayor Ridenour said Modesto would receive $8 million in federal relief, $2 million of which would be aimed specifically at buying foreclosed homes in the airport neighborhood. The county doesn’t want to build sewers, curbs, sidewalks and gutters until there’s a way to pay to maintain that infrastructure.In 2006, Modesto approved an airport neighborhood revitalization strategy. The plan included building a community center on an empty lot, attracting a full-service grocery store, reviving a neglected community garden, starting a Neighborhood Watch group, starting a tool bank for residents, and giving small loans to businesses. Progress has been slow. The city won federal approval for the strategy in late 2008.
With that hurdle cleared, Modesto could have awarded federal money to organizations that directly serve the airport neighborhood. That didn’t happen until this month. In May, the City Council approved a $20,000 grant to the Healthy Start site at Orville Wright School.
Airport resident Alex Salas, 22, said he’d put more cops at the top of the list, along with a gang injunction, the anti-gang measure used to fight gang activity in south Modesto.
City officials say they’ll make better use of a second round of federal funding Modesto received in January. The city won $25 million, of which $10.5 million will pay for buying and fixing up foreclosures and vacant properties.
City staff members are recruiting a full-service grocery store. Modesto recently set aside $1.4 million in federal money for curbs, gutters and sidewalks.
The city has $94,000 in federal money to promote economic development in the area. Some of it could help neighborhood residents form small businesses. “This is real community capacity building. It’s people working with one another to achieve change. It’s working toward self-sufficiency,” Ramirez said.
The foreclosure crisis is by no means localized to the airport district, nor is it limited to the failings of home developers.
Valley residents tangled in loan-aid scam
[Merrill Balassone, May. 21, 2010]
Homeowners from seven Stanislaus County cities were among the victims of a multimillion-dollar loan modification scheme run out of a Southern California boiler room, the state attorney general said.
The victims handed over fees of as much as $5,000 to help keep their houses out of foreclosure. “I almost lost the house because I was depending on them to mediate the process and they never did,” said Jeff Carnie, an Oakdale resident who sought help from the group.
The men are accused of bilking $2.3 million from 1,500 homeowners, including some in Modesto, Turlock, Ceres, Oakdale, Riverbank, Manteca and Newman.The three-county region including Stanislaus, Merced and San Joaquin counties continues to have the highest percentage of defaulted mortgages in California.Since 2007, when the region’s housing crisis began, nearly 52,500 Stanislaus, Merced and San Joaquin County homes have been lost to foreclosure. That includes about 12.7 percent of all houses and condos in Stanislaus, 15.5 percent in Merced and 13.9 percent in San Joaquin.
These certainly aren’t the only challenges faced by home owners in Modesto. Furthermore, once a home is left vacant it becomes a community problem on many levels. What an we, average citizens, do about this? How can we re-think housing environments and the cliche of the white picket fence?
HOUSING CHALLENGE
- LEARN – Educate yourself about Recovery Act programs and outreach organizations in Modesto.
- ACT – What can you do about it? What kinds of citizen participation or collaboration are available to you? Using a self-described super power, create an alliance with an organization that either helps those who have become homeless, or that helps neighborhoods recover from empty houses and abandoned lots. Tell us about your alliance.
- IMAGINE – Unleash your creativity and see how well you can flight off foreclosure and blight!
- Ask A Mentor for Help
