State officials and housing advocates have long identified mobile home parks as a crucial source of affordable housing in California — offering rents far below market-rate apartments in many regions — but also as a chronically underfunded one. Dirt roads, failing septic systems and electrical grids unable to handle summer air conditioning loads were common across hundreds of aging parks statewide, according to researchers at UCLA and the California Housing Partnership.
At Shady Lane Estates, those problems were acute. The park’s roads were unpaved and prone to flooding, and when it rained the water combined with waste from constantly backed-up septic tanks. Parents would drive their children through the muck to reach the school bus stop. Summer afternoons regularly pushed past 110 degrees, but the park’s outdated electrical system could not sustain the air conditioners inside the poorly insulated mobile homes. Rubi Castro, a mother of four, told reporters she remembered placing her younger children in buckets of cold water while waiting for the power to come back on.
That chapter ended in late April, when the park reopened following a comprehensive renovation. New paved roads and a modern sewer system replaced the flooded dirt lanes and septic fields. A robust electrical system — funded partly through the state program — can now handle the draw of dozens of air conditioners at once. Residents who had lived for years with unreliable service returned to a park that looked and functioned like a different place.
The renovation was financed through California’s Mobilehome Park Rehabilitation and Resident Ownership Program, a state initiative that had existed for at least a decade but was widely considered too restrictive to be useful. According to the California News Publishers Association — which originally reported on the program before the Associated Press distributed the story nationally — the program had gone largely unused and forgotten for at least a decade. Its original design focused almost entirely on helping residents purchase parks, but the application process was described as labyrinthine and few applicants succeeded.
In 2023, the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom approved a major overhaul. The program’s scope was expanded: funds could now be used not just to finance purchases but to repair and replace park infrastructure and even dilapidated units themselves. The updated rules also streamlined the application process, making it accessible to more parks and their residents.
The change drew immediate attention from local governments and housing nonprofits. Riverside County Supervisor Betsy McGovern-Garcia, whose district includes Shady Lane, said the project demonstrated that the revamped program could work at scale. She described the transformation as critical for a region where mobile home parks house thousands of low- and moderate-income families who would otherwise struggle to find affordable rentals.
Tracy Bejotte, a longtime Shady Lane resident, said the improvements had changed daily life. She recalled the constant anxiety of not knowing whether the septic system would back up or whether the power would stay on during a heat wave. Now, she said, she and her neighbors could finally feel secure in their homes.
But the Shady Lane project remains an exception rather than a rule. Researchers and advocates said hundreds of similarly distressed mobile home parks across California need comparable upgrades, but the program’s current funding levels — drawn from state bond proceeds and general fund allocations — cannot meet the demand. Brian Augusta, a policy advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said the program was a promising tool but that state investment would need to grow significantly to address the scope of the problem.
Andrew Rumbach, an urban planning researcher who has studied mobile home park conditions, said the parks represent a form of naturally occurring affordable housing that the state cannot afford to lose. When a park closes or becomes uninhabitable, he noted, the displacement of residents often pushes them into more expensive, less stable housing — or into homelessness.
Gregory Pierce of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation said the renovation of Shady Lane showed that targeted infrastructure investments could make a real difference in residents’ quality of life. He echoed the call for sustained funding and expressed cautious optimism that the program’s expansion was gaining political traction.
Kate Rose of the California Housing Partnership said her organization has been working with multiple parks exploring applications under the revamped rules. She said the application pipeline was growing, but that technical assistance and pre-development funding remained barriers for some resident groups.
Sabrina Ramirez, another Shady Lane resident, said after moving back she could finally let her children play outside without worrying about contaminated water or sewage. Joel Beltran, a resident who lived in the park through the worst years, said he had doubted the renovation would ever happen. When the new roads and power lines went in, he said, it felt like the state had finally remembered that people like him existed.
The transformation at Shady Lane has drawn attention beyond Riverside County. Local officials from the Central Valley and inland Southern California have inquired about the program for parks in their jurisdictions. State housing department staff said the number of applications has increased since the 2023 overhaul, though they did not provide a precise count.
For now, the program’s future depends on continued state funding. The 2023 expansion was supported by bipartisan majorities in both chambers, but lawmakers have not committed to additional appropriations beyond existing bond allocations. Housing policy experts said the Shady Lane project could serve as a proof of concept — evidence that when the state directs resources to the most distressed parks, the improvements can be transformative.
But they also cautioned that the need far outstrips what one program can provide. The Shady Lane renovation, for all its success, was a single park in a single desert valley.
Residents there said that was enough to make a difference in their lives. Castro, the mother of four, said she no longer worried about how her children would sleep on the hottest nights. The air conditioning stays on now, she said, and that alone felt like a miracle.