TIME IS RUNNING OUT—Councilmember Claudia Bill-de la Peña, right, and other officials meet with residents of Conejo Mobile Home Park. The Aug. 11 meeting took place on a street inside the park, which is closing at 1200 Newbury Road. Residents seeking government assistance were told there was no help on the way. The property owner, Joseph Bednar, is hiring a relocation counselor to work with residents to reduce the chance of homelessness. Residents must vacate by the end of December. NANCY NEEDHAM/Acorn Newspapers Government officials were unable to offer much help to Conejo Mobile Home Park residents, but the man evicting them has hired a relocation counselor to help them find new homes.

Mecky Myers plans to transport herself and her mobile home to 1200 Newbury Road on Fri., Aug. 20, where she will make herself available to those in need of relocation help as the mobile home park closes.

Residents have been told to move out by Dec. 31. Those who want to stay until June will be able to do so rent-free for six months but will only get 90 percent of their relocation allowance from property owner Joseph Bednar. There were originally 49 units; there are about 30 still occupied by residents in need of assistance.

Myers, who speaks French, German, Spanish and English, will move into the park so she can be close to her clients. Her company provides assistance in eight languages. She’s been a relocation specialist for 40 years, helping displaced people find new homes. Myers plans moves, provides transportation, helps with leases and loans, and creatively finds solutions, she said.

“I see this as a calling from God, not a job. It’s missionary work. I help people who are disabled and elderly. I help illiterate families with small children. It’s complicated, but those who are one step away from being homeless can find a better life,” she said.

Myers said the work is intensive and requires patience; she must look at a client’s individual needs and be sensitive and caring. She’ll be available, Myers said, to her Conejo clients night and day, every day.

In a past mobile home park closure, she helped 47 people become first-time homebuyers out of 65 displaced, she said.

“They call me the Queen of Mobile Homes,” Myers said.

She likes the title.

“Mecky Myers will match people up with housing options on an individual basis,” Bednar said.

At a meeting on Aug. 11 with government officials, not much hope was offered to residents seeking government assistance.

With tears in her eyes, Councilmember Claudia Bill-de la Peña said, “It’s very difficult for me to tell you this, but the city’s not going to bail you out, to subsidize you. I can’t promise nobody’s going to be homeless. I know it’s not fair, but nothing can be done.”

Subsidized federal and state housing in Thousand Oaks is 99 percent occupied; there are 2,700 families, about 6,000 people, on the waiting list. No more applications for the waiting list are being taken, said Douglas Tapking, Area Housing Authority executive director.

Only one person at the Aug. 11 meeting had signed up for Section 8 subsidized housing. Park resident Penny Mayou had done it four years ago and was still on the waiting list, she said.

City community development deputy director Mark Towne handed out a list of apartments that might be available.

Those in the group of 24 people at the meeting who looked at the list remarked that the people in the mobile home park didn’t have total incomes as high as the rents on the list.

Mayou said some residents are so full of despair they’ve talked about committing suicide rather than becoming homeless when it’s time that to leave their homes.

“Suicide is not an option,” Bednar said in a phone call after that meeting.

He said he was confident that Myers was going to be able to help the residents.

“Many will find a much nicer place to live,” he said.

Myers said she once helped a man relocate who, upon their first meeting, told her he would never leave his home where he had resided for so long. After she helped him find a new place, he was one of the most grateful.

“He said he couldn’t believe he had lived there and put up with that place as long as he did,” she said.

Among those at the park in Thousand Oaks is World War II veteran Gordon Manley, who does not want to move. He has no living family.

“As you can imagine, this situation is causing me and my neighbors considerable anxiety,” Manley wrote in a letter to Bednar.

There’s also 2-month-old Grace Martinez, who was sleeping in a stroller.

Park residents had bought their mobile homes, which aren’t really movable, and were renting space from the property owner, some for decades, until the park was purchased by Bednar and he decided to close it.

Residents hoped the city would protect them—with a loan to help them purchase the park, through zoning restrictions that would keep it a mobile home park or by requiring Bednar to pay them market value for their mobile homes.

None of those things happened.

Ernesto Lopez said he bought his mobile home in 2005 after borrowing $55,000.

Now he’s being offered $12,000 from the relocation package, leaving him in debt for the home he must leave behind.

Ofelia Marin said she also paid $55,000 for her mobile home in 2005 and has been offered $12,000 for it.

Alfredo Sandoval said he paid $46,000 in 2004. He has a wife and three young daughters, he said. After he gets the $12,000 to pay for his mobile home, Sandoval will have to continue to make payments on the loan but will have no shelter for his family, he said.

“This shocks me. I thought someone would help us.”

“It feels like we’re watching the country in the 1930s. It’s sad,” said resident Guy Thomas as he pushed his mother, Charlotte, away from the meeting in her wheelchair. “There’s no solution right now. Please say your prayers for the good people here. It’s in God’s hand.”