It's here! Law Foundation Supervising Attorney, Nadia Aziz, and Buena Vista Resident Association member, Maria Martinez, spoke to Silicon Valley Community Foundation Program Officer Vu-Bang Nguyen a few months ago about what it was like to save a small, low-income community in Palo Alto and what other communities can learn from the experience.
Click here to listen to SVCF Philanthropy Now's episode on Buena Vista Mobile Home Park.
For five years, more than 400 residents of Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, Palo Alto’s last mobile home park, fought to preserve their homes after the park owners announced their intention to sell the property to a developer.
Earlier this month, a deal was reached that will preserve the park as affordable housing.
Buena Vista families will continue to enjoy their diverse and tight-knit community and benefit from living in a high opportunity area of Silicon Valley, one that has high-quality Palo Alto schools, safe neighborhoods, jobs, and healthcare.
We thank the Housing Authority of Santa Clara County and its Executive Director Katherine Harasz, who, together with Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, worked to ensure that Buena Vista will be preserved--and renovated-- and operated on a day-to-day basis by The Caritas Corporation, a nonprofit with a mission of maintaining quality affordable housing.
We worked in partnership with our tireless and courageous clients, the Buena Vista residents' association, and many other community advocates and supporters, including: the Friends of Buena Vista, a dedicated group of Palo Altans, led by Winter Dellenbach; the Palo Alto School Board; the Palo Alto and regional PTAs, led by Susan Eldredge and Nancy Krop; the Community Working Group; Stanford professors and students, led by Education Professor Amado Padilla; Larry Klein; and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian and his staff members Micaela Hellman-Tincher and Kristina Loquist.
Photo by Eric Kuhri, Bay Area News Group
The Law Foundation's Buena Vista preservation team included senior attorneys Nadia Aziz and Diana Castillo, senior outreach coordinators Teresa Magana and Nuemi Guzman, supervising attorney Melissa Morris, former supervising attorney James Zahradka, and directing attorney Kyra Kazantzis. The team was supported by expert co-counsel Madeline Howard, Navneet Grewal, Sue Himmelreich, and Dick Rothschild at the Western Center on Law & Poverty. The law firm of Sidley Austin LLP provided generous pro bono staffing and financial resources for the litigation effort; Matt Dolan and Norm Blears were the key, hard-working members of the Sidley team.
