The story of the empty lot at 618 San Pascual St. on the Westside began with the nightmare of a devastating house fire, and will end with the dream of home ownership for several poor families.
The middle of the story was punctuated Wednesday with a groundbreaking ceremony by Habitat for Humanity of Southern Santa Barbara County, which purchased the sloping empty lot last year and will fill it in with grading and four condos. The housing units will be owned and inhabited by low-income families and individuals, all of who were on hand Wednesday and who now live in substandard housing that is either crammed, unsanitary or both.
One of them, Igor Ortiz, is a single father of two young children and a custodian at their school, Monte Vista Elementary. Ortiz and his children now share a three-bedroom unit with another family.
In an odd twist of fate, the golden-shovel celebration that included Habitat officials, Santa Barbara City Council members, Mayor Marty Blum, County Supervisor Salud Carbajal, most of the 13 future occupants and a few dozen other well-wishers was made possible by a fire.
On the morning of May 10, 2005, the house on the lot went up in flames, displacing the family that rented it. That morning, the house’s owner and landlord, Anthony Kar, told the Santa Barbara News-Press he recently had dreamed the house was on fire, and so came to check on the family, only to find it engulfed.
Luckily, a neighbor had rescued the house’s lone occupant — a sleeping 17-year-old boy, whose parents were working — by pounding on the door before it burned to the ground. Investigators determined the cause to be a mattress lying on a floor heater.
About a year later, Habitat for Humanity purchased the lot for $495,000, which was below market value, said Joyce McCullough, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Southern Santa Barbara County. All told, the price tag for the project — the local group’s second ever in Santa Barbara — is $1.9 million.
Construction crews will break ground in about three months, after the winter rains, she said. The three two-bedroom condos and one single-bedroom unit over the garage probably will be finished in a year and a half.
McCullough said the four families were chosen from a field of about 40. Applicants are selected by a committee through Habitat based on need, and approved by the board. In other words, the chosen ones are those living in the worst conditions.
Occupying the single-bedroom unit will be Laura Rosales, who now is living in a friend’s converted garage after a bout with homelessness. Rosales said she had enjoyed a long career as a service adviser in the automotive industry when an illness rendered her unable to function 11 to 12 years ago.
“I woke up one day and couldn’t get one foot in front of the other,” she said. “A week went by, then a month, then two.”
Unknown to Rosales, some of her friends wrote letters on her behalf to Habitat for Humanity, and the organization encouraged her to apply.
“In this life, we don’t dream of being ill and disabled, living in a garage and being grateful for it,” she said. “To be here is so profoundly humbling, and I’m so grateful.”
Another future resident is Gabriel Escamilla, a 28-year-old cabinetmaker for D.D. Ford. Escamilla lives with his girlfriend and three children in the bedroom of her parents’ doublewide trailer in Goleta. One day, a neighbor advised them to apply for a house through Habitat.
“We decided to give it a shot, and here we are,” he said Wednesday.
The fourth family, the Trujillos — a husband, wife and two children — have lived for nearly 10 years in a “very small apartment in a very run-down location,” said McCullough, who added that the front door of their home opens to a dirt lot.
The 45-year-old father, Mauricio, who repacks wine in a warehouse for the Gold Meadow Wine Club, said he pays $1,600 a month in rent. His monthly mortgage will be about $1,000, and the home will be paid off in 25 to 40 years, he said.
Among the stipulations for receiving a home through Habitat for Humanity is the requirement to literally help pound nails. Each adult in every family must contribute at least 250 hours of so-called “sweat equity” to the project, McCullough said.
A family can’t sell their home at the market rate until they’ve owned the home for at least 45 years. Until then, they must sell it to Habitat for Humanity, which would pay them all the money they’ve put in, plus interest based on the Consumer Price Index, which usually amounts to about 3 percent a year.
Habitat found the money for the project through low- to no-interest loans from the Housing Trust Fund of Santa Barbara, as well as a $700,000 federal grant. It is still raising money for the remainder of this project, as well as for future projects and an endowment. Since March, the group has raised $1.5 million of its goal of $3.5 million, which it hopes to achieve by the end of 2009.
“A lot of you may believe that Habitat is in the business of building houses,” Mike Frank, vice president of the local chapter’s board of directors, said in a speech during Wednesday’s event. “I believe Habitat is in the business of building hope.”
Write to rkuznia@noozhawk.com.
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