Arriving Saturday morning at the infamous Costa Mesa Motor Inn on Harbor Blvd., I saw three little girls, about 7 or 8 years old, giggling and chasing each other near the golf course fence, behind the motel's entrance gate. I immediately recognized one little girl whose picture had been in the paper recently.
My heart was telling me Saturday to go with a handful of others to pass out flyers to motel residents informing them of their legal rights. Recently the city council voted to approve a zoning change and replace the motel with luxury apartments. Those little girls and their parents live at the motel and will need to find a new home in 2016. The flyers will help them with their futures.
This apartment project came before the city council in 2014 for a "screening" when I was still on the council. At the screening, I approved the new project's concept. The outdated motel had a bad reputation for crime and many police and fire calls. However, at the time, I had asked the developer representing the owner to please include "affordable housing" to match the incomes of those residents being displaced, in the final project. Unfortunately, that request was denied. There will be some affordable housing in the new project, but the future residents would need to make approximately $75,000, perhaps more than $100,000 to be eligible for an apartment. I wouldn't qualify.
By passing out the flyers, I was in a very small way helping residents in their relocation plans from the motel to a new home. I told them that if they have lived at the motel for more than 30 days, they were promised cash relocation assistance. The owner agreed to pay the benefits beginning in February 2016 through August 1, 2016. In addition, Councilwoman Katrina Foley successfully negotiated with the owner for $250,000 for the City staff to assist residents. Those details, I understand, are still being worked out.
As I spoke with some residents, I was told by several that the conditions of the motel had improved greatly since 2013. Gone were many drug dealers and the problems they brought.
I talked with parents, children by their sides, all concerned with their futures and how things would work out for them. They welcomed the flyers which reminded them of some things they could do to prepare for their moves. I listened to several stories of lives on the brink, a few steps away from homelessness. Fortunately, they were looking forward to church members bringing cheer and presents for a Christmas party for them.
This motel and its residents had been characterized many times by the council majority as a den of iniquity, filled with drugs, pimps and prostitutes needing immediate removal from our city. But that is not what I saw. I saw a very clean motel, (no trash), a nice playground and sparkling pool and normal looking people and kids. Many told me they were long time Costa Mesa residents wanting to stay in Costa Mesa.
I believe all lives matter, and some lives are not worth less than others. (I hated that "lifeboat" analogy we used to teach in the 70's).
If we keep going in this direction in Costa Mesa, we might end up with more money in our budget because of more revenue from property taxes, but we will have lost our heart, our compassion, and that will be pretty hard to restore.
It takes all kinds of people to make up a great city like ours. We seem to be going down a road where we are squeezing out those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. It wasn't too long ago that residents of the mobile home park Rolling Homes on Newport Blvd. almost lost their homes to a proposed apartment project until an adjacent property owner saved the day and said he wasn't going to sell his property to provide access to the new project. God intervened.
I'm praying for these folks at the motel. They could use some miracles too.
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