The birth and breaking of a forgotten community: part 2 of a three-part series The birth and breaking of a forgotten community: part 2 of a three-part series (September 13, 2002)

Bulldozing the neighborhood Bulldozing the neighborhood (September 13, 2002)

In 1968, dozens of families living in the Mexican-American neighborhood around Bailey Avenue (now Shoreline Boulevard) were notified that their homes would be forcibly bought and demolished by the city. Reactions ranged from complete outrage to quiet acceptance. The newly revealed plans were a devastating surprise, especially to the families that had invested their hard-earned income into the improvement and expansion of homes where the Shoreline overpass and boulevard would be built. The money offered for relocation was in most cases, not enough to remain in Mountain View.

As the press and general public learned more about the project, questions were raised. Of the 115 families forced to relocate for the project, 82 percent had Spanish surnames. Some began to question whether there were motives for the project other than infrastructure improvement. Residents began to wonder if the design and placement of the overpass and its on and off ramps had purposely been made to destroy what some city leaders perceived as a "blighted" neighborhood.

But determining the motives behind the destruction of the Mexican-American neighborhood on Washington Street was not the main priority of most residents forced with relocation; the focus for many was the desperate search to find new housing before the bulldozers rolled in.

The city tried to offer some assistance to the families that displaced by the project. A non-profit agency named Raven Enterprises worked with the city to relocate 10 homes from Bailey Avenue to open pieces of land along Middlefield Road. These homes were then given to the families who were in the greatest need of assistance.

People were also hired to help families relocate. The amount of money that property owners were being paid through eminent domain was not enough to buy a similar property in Mountain View. Lucia Garcia was one of the people hired to help families relocate; in the oral history "Bittersweet-Memories of Old Mountain View" she said,

"Some of the people owned their homes and they got little money for the land. They didn't make a profit. I wouldn't say so. They had to go somewhere else and buy with higher interest and higher prices. Some of them had their homes already paid for. They were living just right. They had to sell and move somewhere else and buy -- pay a higher price and higher interest. Not only that, they had to leave their friends and neighborhood. A lot of these people were there for years and years."

My grandparents were one of the families lucky enough to have the resources to remain in Mountain View. Unaware of the city's plans to demolish the neighborhood, they had only recently completed a small rental cottage behind their home. Unable to afford another home large enough for their growing family in Mountain View, they decided to buy both homes back and quickly found a lot to relocate them to. The entire process however, created an extreme financial burden that they still have to deal with today. "I went twice as much in debt than if I would have stayed on Washington Street. My homes and property would have been paid for by now," said my gradfather, Simon Sias, in "Bittersweet-Memories of Old Mountain View."

The emotional burden was greater. My grandmother, Emma Sias, was pregnant at the time of the widening. "Moving us away from our family and neighbors was hard," she said. "We were still in Mountain View, but we just weren't close to each other like we were before. ... We were keeping our house and moving it, but the trees, the neighborhood, our community, was destroyed."

The situation was worse for the many renters living in the area. Mountain View was facing a housing shortage at the time, and the affordable rents of the Washington Street neighborhood could not be found elsewhere in the city. "It was just impossible. They couldn't afford the high rents and a lot of the landlords wouldn't take them because of the large families," said Garcia.

Many of the residents displaced by the project were forced to leave Mountain View. Our city lost a significant percentage of its established Mexican-American community through this project. The social network that existed in the neighborhood struggled to survive as former neighbors were spread throughout the entire Santa Clara Valley.

Today Bailey Avenue is busy Shoreline Boulevard. Hundreds of cars drive over the land that was once the home of my grandparents, great grandparents and their neighbors. In many ways, Mountain View has become the community city leaders envisioned when they began to expand our city's roadways at the expense of its older neighborhoods. On the other hand, attitudes in the city began to change soon after the widening of Bailey Avenue occurred. Increased emphasis on neighborhood preservation halted the widening of other roads in Old Mountain View, sparing many neighborhoods the destruction that occurred along Bailey.
Nick Perry is a Mountain View native and co-founder of the Mountain View Preservation Alliance. He is a student at UC Berkeley.
Next week: The aftermath