OC Mobile Home Park May be Torn Down

Residents at the Bali Hi Mobile Home Park in Santa Ana say they are in the path of a proposed transit project that could force them from their homes

Raymond Hardy takes care of his 66-year old mother. They both live at the Bali Hi Mobile Home park in Santa Ana. Looking to the future, he assumed this is where he, too, would retire.

"We can't afford to move, to go live somewhere else," he said. "We've been here for 25 years, and it's kind of stressing my mom out a lot."

The stress, he says, comes from uncertainty - the City of Santa Ana plans to turn Harbor Boulevard into "a complete street" - a safer place for cars, people and buses. But the 300 folks who live in the mobile home park worry they will lose their homes in the name of progress.

"I'd be in my car," resident John Hillig said. "Literally, I'd be in my car. I got no where to go."

Mobile home park residents started a petition to let city planners know they are against the 2-mile-long facelift. The Harbor Corridor Transit project will add 3,800 homes, shops and restaurants.

Right now, the six-lane boulevard is a mix of housing, car lots and empty businesses.
City officials say the changes will take years. How many is unclear, but officials said this redevelopment can only be done by private property owners.

"The zoning that will be put in place would just say, if you want to do something with your property, here's the way we'd like to see it done," according to city planner Sergio Klotz.

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Still, some fear even a decade could make a difference.

"You're not supposed to have to worry about that when you're in your 60s," Hillig said.

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