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Five years ago, all Elizabeth Reynaga wanted for herself and her family was a bigger place to live with a lower rent to pay.
She and her husband and their five kids got both when they relocated from an apartment building south of Sacramento to the mobile home that they bought at The Westerner, a Mutual Housing Community.
With her living situation stabilized, Elizabeth extended herself within the Westerner community. She joined the residents’ council and used her position to try and bring people together. She listened to her neighbors. She worked hard in an effort to put on community events.
Elizabeth’s positive spirit and her ability to communicate with her neighbors despite her limitations with the English language impressed Mutual Housing organizers. Last year, they asked her to apply to become a resident member of the Mutual Housing Board of Directors. Elizabeth filled out the applications, and late last year the board added her to the roster as its newest member.
At the same time, Elizabeth became active in the Residents United Network, a statewide affordable housing advocacy group. This spring, Elizabeth will participate in RUN’s “lobby day” activities in the state Capitol, working with affordable housing residents from throughout California to press lawmakers on the need for more affordable housing construction.
The appointments thrilled Elizabeth, who is more than aware of the responsibility that has come with her new position. To meet it, Elizabeth says that she will begin her tenure with two primary goals in mind: to listen, and to learn.
“I am so happy to be there,” Elizabeth said of her appointment to the board. “The first thing I need is to learn a lot, about families and schools, everything. I need to learn the laws. And I need to listen to the people, to respect what the people say.
“Each single day is something new, with new goals, and you have to work hard, and you need to like doing it,” Elizabeth added.
The Westerner is a 47-unit mobile home park within the southern city limits of Sacramento, on West Stockton Boulevard. Like most mobile home communities, most of the residents at the Westerner own the places where they live, and as homeowners, they might see less of a need to join with others to address neighborhood issues of mutual interest, or to gather with their fellow residents as they do in other Mutual Housing communities to plan or participate in group activities.
When Elizabeth first moved in, the Westerner residents’ council was comprised of a relatively small group of people. Elizabeth and others sought to get the word out that their meetings were truly open to all members of the community. Mutual Housing staff supported this effort to strengthen an inclusive environment, one where anybody who attended a meeting was considered a member of the council.
It was Elizabeth’s persistence in trying to keep the council functioning for all the residents, and her efforts to bring others on board and to carry out community events such as a neighborhood Christmas party, that caught the attention of Mutual Housing officials.
“She was an active person,” said Chinua Rhodes, the organizer who oversees the Westerner and four other Mutual Housing communities. “She was clearly a leader who helped me as an organizer find out who else I should be speaking with, how they did things previously, what were some of the things they wanted to see more of – what they loved, how they could build ownership and power among residents. She was pivotal to the one-on-one meetings to make sure that we at Mutual Housing were aligning with the Westerner, and also that we had key leaders on the ground, in line with our vision for the Westerner.”
What Mutual Housing sought from the residents at the Westerner was more involvement on their part, more inclusivity among themselves, an ability to decide what they want out of their community and how to go about getting it.
In her conversations with her neighbors, Elizabeth sensed that a good number of them were too focused on past controversies. She said she tried to get them to think more about the present, about what they can do for each other – now.
She said it has not been easy to get the individual homeowners at the Westerner to think of themselves as a community.
“People say, ‘No, no, no. We don’t need to involve ourselves like that,’” Elizabeth said.
Mutual Housing Director of Community Organizing Fernando Cibrian described the Westerner as a place where the residents’ pride of individual home ownership distinguishes the mobile home park from the 18 other Mutual Housing communities. He said they are more inclined to be suspicious when Mutual Housing management puts programs in place with the good of everybody in mind.
Still, Cibrian said, it looks like the suspicion is easing at the Westerner, that a core group of residents seem to be coming together.
“We’re trying to bring people together,” Cibrian said “We’re creating an expectation where everybody can be part of the residents’ council. It’s very promising at this moment. Folks are getting together, and they want to meet monthly. We want everybody to be part of the decision making. It’s very positive.”
Before the move to the Westerner, Elizabeth Reynaga and her family had lived in a nice apartment in a neighboring community. It had one big problem, though: it was too small. They found what they needed at the Westerner, where Elizabeth said her family is thriving.
Her children range in age from 18 down to 4, and they are able to make ends meet in their expanded space on her husband Oscar’s plumber salary, as well as the affordability of the lower rent they pay for their mobile home space. They’re paying several hundreds of dollars less than they would be paying had they moved to a larger apartment, which has allowed the family to enroll two of the older daughters in extracurricular activities such as the marching and symphonic bands at their respective schools.
“We are able to afford a more quality of life here for the kids,” Elizabeth said.
Now Elizabeth will be adding on to her busy days of running kids to school and band practice – and, in the case of one daughter, her wrestling practice – in her commitment to the Mutual Housing board and to the RUN program.
“She will have the same role as any other board member, which is to guide the organization and make sure that we are adhering to our mission, our strategic plan, and are being financially responsible with the funds of the organization,” said Mutual Housing Community Development Director Anne Marie Flynn. “But she will also have a particular role in representing the voice and the perspectives of the residents as a resident board member.”
Elizbeth said she is up for the responsibility of helping the board view the organization through the eyes of one of its 3,200 residents.
“I say all the time, whoever needs help, I will help,” Elizabeth said. “People say, ‘You are a leader,’ but I never listen to anything about that. But if you want me to help, I will give you my help. If people have a hard situation, I pray – I say – someday it will be different.”