"We have an odd mix here," says one mobile home resident. "There're people here who have a Corvette in their driveway but can only afford to live in a mobile home park."

In Willow Glen, there are two such black sheep communities: the 90-unit Willow Glen Estates, located on Evans Lane just east of Almaden Expressway, and the 163-unit River Glen Mobile Home Park, adjacent to the Guadalupe Creek on Almaden Road, between Curtner and Canoas Gardens. The River Glen Mobile Home Park is reserved for homeowners 55 years old and older.


Change of pace

Willow Glen Estates resident, Margaret Gallagher, 82, is quite content living in her mobile home park, which was established in 1960.

"It's not a fancy park or anything, but it's comfortable and I enjoy living here," says Gallagher, who has lived there 15 years.

Like most longtime residents, she's seen a lot of changes in the park's growth. She has stayed on through a management upheaval and experienced the park's subsequent revitalization.

"The old manager was only interested in renting to the young chicks," Gallagher says of a long-gone manager, adding that he neglected to maintain the park's services and utilities. The biggest eyesore was the park's unfenced swimming pool, which was never clean.

"He couldn't have cared less about the people here, and this place went downhill fast," she adds.

Eventually he left, and the park's property managers asked Linda Johnson, a longtime resident, to take over in 1994. Through her leadership, the park has regained its positive image. She had a high fence installed at the pool to protect the park's children, and she helped to make the pool clean and safe.

Gallagher says that since Johnson became the manager, "this place is a paradise."


Homesteading on wheels

Willow Glen Estates, like most other mobile home parks, was never really supposed to exist permanently, Johnson says. The area had a pool and was supposed to be a rest stop for mobile homes. But eventually, more homes moved in than were leaving. As San Jose grew, so did its housing problem, and the parks were rezoned as residential areas.

The story's slightly different for the River Glen Mobile Home Park, which was established in 1963 as a retirement community for residents age 55 and older.

"I think people come here because it's a nice community that has that old, small-town charm," says Carol Blackburn, who started managing the park in 1994.

River Glen takes up 12 acres in its east Willow Glen location. Of the 163 units, only a handful await new tenants.

Blackburn and Johnson both say that the term "mobile home" is outmoded, as the homes in their parks can't accurately be described as mobile. And most tenants living in the park see it as their permanent home, not a temporary stopover until they find something better.

Blackburn fondly remembers Frank Medico, one of River Glen's first tenants, who passed away last year.

"He was like our sidewalk monitor," Blackburn says. "He'd walk up and down the streets, greeting everyone and making sure they were doing okay."


Creating a community

Residents at both parks follow Medico's example. The compact nature of the parks encourages residents to look out for each other.

"That's what makes this place a neat place to live," says 73-year-old Phyllis Mikkelsen, who takes comfort in knowing that she and her neighbors are keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

"If I look out my window and see that someone hasn't pulled her blinds like she always does by a certain time every day," Mikkelsen says, "then I know I better look in on her and see that she's OK."

One River Glen resident, 64-year-old Miriam Baker, says that while she's enjoyed the past four years she's lived there, during the day the park is a little too quiet.

"The social end of it has changed, I think," Baker says. "It used to be that people came here to retire, but with the economy the way it is there's a lot of 55-year-old residents who buy a house here but still go to work."


Working and living

Still needing to work to make house payments and keep up with the park's annual rent increases is one of the major challenges that River Glen resident Ruth Meaney faces. At 63, she's on a fixed income from Social Security. Although the park, under the city's rent control ordinances, must set the rent of the mobile home at 75 percent or less of the year's Consumer Price Index, the city's mobile home ordinances allow parks to raise their land rents by about 3 percent annually. Meaney pays $601 per month, plus utilities, out of Social Security payments of $890 per month. The average rent at River Glen is $550 per month, Blackburn says. The average rent at Willow Glen Estates is between $400 to $425 per month, property manager Nave says.

"If my rent keeps going up beyond what Social Security pays me every month," Meaney says, "I may need to move out in maybe five years."

Even at age 73, Mikkelsen stays busy working part time as a receptionist at a retirement community.

"I make enough to get by," she says.

This is Meaney's first time as a homeowner in a mobile home park. She's been a resident for almost three years and says she feels welcome.

"Most older people prefer the quiet this park provides," Blackburn says, "because most everybody's children are grown and have moved away."

Children are scarce at Willow Glen Estates. The park's narrow streets prohibit school buses from coming in, and families try to avoid living in an area that is inaccessible to school buses, Johnson says.


Future challenges

The face of Willow Glen's mobile home parks is ever-changing.

Because both of the parks are in rent controlled areas they qualify for federal block grants.

"Some of our residents applied for those grants, and now this park is jazzed to the nines," Blackburn says.

Besides aesthetic improvements, managers at both parks are working to create a sense of community. The parks have a clubhouse for annual events such as Christmas dinners provided courtesy of the management.

Johnson credits her success as the Willow Glen Estates manager to the Western Mobile Home Association, which trains and educates park managers. Johnson attends three training classes a year and says they are "extremely helpful."

Another recent development was the passing of a state law in 2001 allowing mobile home park residents to keep pets. Prior to this law, parks could have a "no pets" policy.

"Since the law passed," Johnson says, "a lot of pets have come in, and they can be a nuisance."

Johnson says that another nuisance is kids climbing over a retaining wall from the nearby Catalonia Apartments. One night they vandalized the pool area.

The park is squeezed between the Catalonia Apartments and the Evans Lane affordable housing project the city approved last year, which will be located on the site of what is currently a recreational vehicle storage yard.

San Jose District 6 City Council member Ken Yeager has helped the park mediate an agreement with the housing project developer to install a continuous sidewalk and street lights along Evans Lane.

Navé says there may also be a plan to widen the roads in the park, which would allow school buses to serve the park and enhance the safety of children walking to school.

With improvements made and positive goals set for the future, Gallagher sees no reason why she would ever leave and miss out on seeing the park grow.

"I love it here," she says. "And I'm going to stick around as long as I can."