Sewer repair plan for mobile home park receives seal of approval
from housing officials
Gilroy – State housing officials have approved a sewer repair plan for a south Gilroy trailer park four months after raw sewage spread between a group of homes.
The seal of approval from the California Department of Housing and Community Development lifts the prospect of jail time for Thomas Velladao, a Marin tax accountant who owns Velladao Mobile Home Park, and frees 25 low-income families from having to search for new homes. HCD officials had threatened to shut down the park if the owner failed to improve substandard living conditions at the site, tucked out of view near the corner of Luchessa Avenue and Monterey Road.
The mobile home park came under heightened state scrutiny after a pair of women complained to the Dispatch in mid-March, following a week of failed attempts to get park management to clean raw sewage pooling outside their trailers. Park management began cleaning up the spill a week after the women complained, the same day that city and state inspectors swarmed the park.
Velladao denied the women’s claim that sewage outbreaks have occurred frequently in the last four years. State housing records show reports of three sewage spills since 2001, though the women had pictures from additional incidents they said were never reported.
HCD officials this week agreed on a long-term solution to the source of their complaints: a repair plan that involves fixing problem areas in the network of above-ground sewage pipes, rather than overhauling the entire system. The proposal is one of several options that Velladao’s plumbing contractor submitted to the agency.
“HCD will accept the plan with the written understanding that if the repairs do not solve the problem a new system will be required,” HCD spokeswoman Janet Huston said.
Velladao had not received official word from the state by Friday but called the response “good news.”
The agency took an increasingly hard line with Velladao in the last four months. Frustrated with the pace of park-wide repairs following a second sewage spill in May, HCD officials issued a final compliance order with a 30-day deadline. They planned to hold him responsible for both large scale repairs and dozens of health and safety violations at tenants’ homes. HCD officials, who retain jurisdiction over the site as a transportation facility, threatened to hand the matter over to county prosecutors if violations went uncorrected.
Freshly laid asphalt greeted state officials when they pulled into the park two weeks ago for a final inspection. Make-shift sheds and cabanas were torn down, overgrown tree branches were hacked away, and spliced electrical wires were replaced. The sewer repair plan, which Velladao submitted in time for the deadline, was the only outstanding issue out of dozens of health and safety violations.
The owner estimated that he spent $100,000 bringing the park up to state standards. To keep costs down, he spent a week painting, whacking away tree branches and carting off trash.
News of substandard living conditions at the trailer park inspired rebukes from city officials and Dispatch opinion writers, one of whom penned a column calling Velladao a “slumlord.” The owner, a Gilroy native who now lives in Petaluma, maintains that the park’s problems were exaggerated.
“The one thing I would say is, I got involved with the park for the first time in years. I’d been relying on a property manager,” Velladao said. “I got to know all the tenants there and that’s good. I’m going to be more involved in the management of the park from here on out because I don’t want the bad press and I want to know what’s going on with the property.”
