'I just can't breathe anymore:' Ventura County residents struggle to keep up with rent
Editor's note: This story is the first in an occasional series.
The letter from the landlord has become as inevitable as death and taxes. Rent is going up. The reality hits every age group in every demographic from the 78-year-old Oxnard widow surviving on a too small Social Security check to the 25-year-old Oxnard man who can’t afford to leave his parents’ apartment. Ventura County consistently posted some of the highest monthly rental prices in the region. The median two-bedroom apartment in the county rents for $2,653, according to a December report from Southern California Association of Governments. Last year, rental prices increased 10.9%, more than double the normal rate, an analysis by Dyer Sheehan Group Inc. shows. Meanwhile, the vacancy rate dropped to 1.37%.
Dawn Dyer, president of the Ventura firm, cited reasons from the lack of inventory to landlords reacting to the lifting of pandemic restrictions and new rent control laws as leading to the quick rise in prices. She expects this year’s annual survey will show increases slowing down, though prices remain high. The fallout has forced renters into bidding wars or to move from place to place, looking for a spot they can afford. Some end up without a home and others sit right on the brink of eviction. Here are some of their stories.
No margin for error
Marie Smith takes in $1,427 each month in Social Security. She pays out $1,429 in rent alone.
The math is not only incompatible, it is all consuming.
The 78-year-old Oxnard widow sat on an unfurled bedspread in a studio apartment where every inch of space is consumed, much of it by crafts like the red, white and blue collage of Santa Clauses that anchors one wall and the nearby sunflower framed by autumn leaves.
In the scant kitchen a few strides from the bed, a caregiver prepared a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. The TV was tuned to the Hallmark Channel, on this day journeying to Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains and the depression-era drama of “The Waltons.”
Smith wore red leggings and a T-shirt showing another television favorite – the Underwriter from WWE wrestling. She stayed in bed because she was recovering from the fall that shattered her hip and sent her to a hospital and rehab center for three months. A couple of days after returning home, she fell again.
Physical therapy, John-Boy and Mary Ellen on the TV, even the home crafts that calm her anxieties had been reduced, at this moment, to background noise. Bills and obligations gnawed at her: $160 a month for cable, $50 for her Montgomery Ward’s credit card and the letter from her landlord announcing the $1,350-a-month lease would rise nearly $80 as of Dec. 1.
The housing costs are her biggest worry. Each month, Smith has to figure out a way to make ends meet — to pull a rabbit out of the hat. She asks caregivers, family members, everyone she meets for advice.
“Do you know someone who could help me?” she says.
The persistence usually pays off. A Methodist church she used to attend in Canoga Park contributed about three months rent from a Good Samaritan fund. A Ventura nonprofit pledged to help cover December, January and February. November remained a problem. Thanksgiving came and went. She still hadn’t paid.
“I don’t have the money,” she said, reminding herself to call another nonprofit that offered her help if and when she receives a three-day eviction notice. “I don’t think it’s fair for seniors. You have to be homeless for people to help you.”
It wasn’t always like this. She was married for 42 years to Jimmy Smith, a mechanic who could fix anything. They lived in a three-bedroom house in Simi Valley, moving to a Canoga Park mobile home park and a double-wide that was destroyed in an electrical fire.
He died three years ago. Smith lost more than the love of her life. She inherited his Social Security benefits but had to give up her own, reducing the household’s income by several hundred dollars a month. Her costs kept rising.
Smith thinks she knows the solution. Section 8 housing would provide federal vouchers that could cut her rent by more than half. She likely qualifies for aid, but there’s a catch. The waiting list is 3,000 people long, so backlogged new applications haven’t been accepted in nearly four years.
It means “The Waltons” and homemade crafts may stay on the backburner indefinitely. Smith may have to keep conjuring up magic each month. She’s not sure she can do it.
“I’m so stressed out all the time, I just can’t breathe anymore,” she said.
'I get frustrated to have to share a room'
Kyle Emmanuel De La Torre can’t leave home.
The 25-year old shares a bedroom with his brother in his family's apartment in Oxnard. He can't afford rent for his own place.
“I like my own space and controlling my own environment, but when I’m living with someone else, it’s not realistic at all,” De La Torre said.
In an attempt to exercise some control, he’s lined the walls of his room with art. A poster bearing a skull bursting with flowers represents his belief in rebirth after death.
De La Torre isn’t the only one who is stuck. His peers are in similar situations.
“Our generation has a more difficult time moving out,” he said.
Paying first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit up front poses a major challenge for would-be renters in Oxnard, De La Torre said.
The average monthly rent for a studio apartment in Oxnard is over $1,800, according to the latest Ventura County rental survey. Many of his peers who have moved away from home have to live with multiple roommates to make it work, De La Torre added.
The 25-year-old was recently hired by a local grocery store after job hunting for 11 months. In his spare time, De La Torre volunteers with Central Coast Alliance United for A Sustainable Economy, or CAUSE, and attends protests on subjects like passing local rent control.
His search for a place to call home dates back years. When De La Torre was 18, he moved to northern California on a whim but he was back home within months after rent and other expenses left him homeless.
He tried moving out again at 19, but circumstances forced him back into his family’s apartment less than two years later.
“I’m very honored to have a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in, but I get frustrated to have to share a room,” De La Torre said.
'I don't need much'
On a quiet morning in Steckel Park, U.S. Navy veteran Mike Arguelles used dried twigs to stoke a small fire at his campsite not far from Santa Paula Creek.
Arguelles has been visiting the 142-acre park in Santa Paula off Highway 150 for over 50 years. Born in Santa Paula, he moved to Washington state with his mom following his parents’ divorce, but he spent every summer with his father’s family in Ventura County.
“Grandma would take us to Steckel Park. It’s a wonderful spot,” Arguelles said, standing under an oak canopy that obscured the sight but not the sound of the nearby highway.
Arguelles’ former playground became his temporary home in late October. The 58-year-old lost his housing when construction jobs dried up during the pandemic, and he hasn’t had a permanent address since.
Gold Coast Veterans Foundation, a Camarillo-based nonprofit that assists former military servicemembers, paid for a campsite so Arguelles had a safe place to stay this fall while he looked for housing and tried to connect to veterans benefits. Doctors are currently in the process of diagnosing the reason behind mysterious episodes of debilitating pain that have plagued the father of one for years.
Without a diagnosis, Arguelles cannot be declared disabled to collect benefits. So he picks up odd construction jobs when he can and does what he needs to get by.
Last month, that meant living at Steckel Park.
“This place has been taking care of me for a long time,” he said, sitting at a picnic table constructed from river rocks.
Arguelles starts his mornings in Steckel Park building a fire to boil water for coffee. Then he feeds his rescue dog, Juno, an apple head Chihuahua-Shih Tzu mix who is afraid of most humans except Arguelles. Then the veteran looks for firewood.
Physical activity, like the daily 3-mile trek into town for supplies, are often painful for Arguelles. Dental woes, including an abscessed tooth, have caused his face and right eye to swell.
Campsites at the county-run park are $25 a night. Before Arguelles moved back to Ventura County three years ago, he rented a house in Washington for $750 a month. Arguelles struggles with addiction, and he moved from his old digs in search of a healthier lifestyle.
He said renting a room in Ventura County costs between $800 to $1,200 a month. He said he worries for others facing the same or tougher situations.
“There’s no reason rents should be this high,” he said. “We’re talking about human lives. People don’t realize every second of every minute that goes by, somebody is sitting there not knowing where they’re going to get their next meal, not knowing where they’re going to sleep or if they’re going to find a place to sleep that is safe or warm.”
Before coming to Steckel Park, Arguelles spent some nights on the streets. He said after dark, he would stash his belongings in a safe place then go for a walk.
“I would come to a random place on the sidewalk, and I would just sit down,” he said. “There was nowhere else to go.”
After a month at Steckel Park, Arguelles was able to rent a place he could afford: a recreational vehicle on blocks in someone’s backyard for $700 a month. He calls it "a blessing."
“I’m grateful,” he said. “I don’t need much.”
Arguelles toured the Pacific with the U.S. Navy in the 1980s before working in the finance and construction industries. Oct. 31 marked the 40th anniversary of Arguelles' entry into Navy bootcamp. He spent it at Steckel Park.
An ‘absolutely absurd’ market
Matt Hanley checked rental prices in an Oak Park apartment complex every day for weeks.
The spot offered good deals compared to everything else he found. But his friend was stuck in a lease for a few more months, and Hanley needed to share the rent.
From April to May to June, the price increased $100, $150, $200. Then, it hit a total of $3,000.
“I have got to get one of these spots just so I have something,” he remembers thinking.
Months earlier, Hanley shared a four-bedroom West Hills house with three friends, paying $900 of the $3,500 monthly rent. A chief underwriting officer for a commercial insurance company, he stashed away savings, hoping to have enough for a down payment on a house one day. The dream got postponed when housing prices skyrocketed in 2020.
Then, his dad got sick.
Hanley moved back to his childhood home in Thousand Oaks to help take care of his father, diagnosed with Lou Gherig’s disease. Everyone thought they had two years but his dad died about five months later.
By spring, Hanley, 35, fell back into a rental market that had become “absolutely absurd.”
The second he and his friends gave up the West Hills lease, rent on the house rose $1,000 a month. Meanwhile, listings for one- or two-bedroom apartments ran from $2,500 to $3,000-plus.
“There’s just not enough inventory,” said Hanley, who comes from a real estate family and earned a license himself between his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. “People fortunate enough to have the ability to are pretty much spending every single penny that they have just to get in somewhere."
He had hunted for apartments for weeks with his friend and became a regular on rental sites, casting wider and wider nets.
Hanley worked in Westlake Village. His friend had a job in the San Fernando Valley, and they hoped to find somewhere neither would have a long commute.
With gas prices still north of $6 per gallon, a 10-minute commute sounded good. It also turned out to be wishful thinking. A 30-minute commute would be OK, they agreed.
They handed in a half-dozen applications and lost out on every one of them, some spots renting high above the listing price.
“People were offering more per month upfront just to lock in the lease,” Hanley said. “It was wild.”
Apartments at the Oak Park complex were priced higher than Hanley or his friend hoped to spend, but also were a find in a market that had priced out many. He watched the prices, hoping they could wait out his friend’s lease.
By mid-June, prices rose too fast to wait. Hanley would have to cover the first few months himself or risk losing their best shot. He jumped online, signed a lease and paid the deposit for a unit his friend had yet to see.
He texted his friend, “So, I did a thing.”
Find help
Here are some local resources for housing and rental assistance:
The county of Ventura compiled a list of contacts in cities throughout area at https://www.ventura.org/county-executive-office/community-development/housing-homeowner-and-rental-assistance/
HomeShare, coordinated by the Ventura County Area Agency on Aging, matches people in need of housing with people who have a room to rent. Call 805-477-7300, email at Home.Share@ventura.org or go to https://www.vcaaa.org/our-services/housing/#homeshare
Area Housing Authority of the County of Ventura coordinates Section 8 housing for low-income residents and also offers other assistance. Call 805-480-9991 or go to https://www.ahacv.org/.
Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation builds and manages home for low-income families. Call 805-659-3791 or go to https://www.cabrilloedc.org/apply-for-housing/.
Do you have a rental story to share? Contact Ventura County Star reporter Cheri Carlson at cheri.carlson@vcstar.com or 805-437-0260.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Ventura County residents are struggling to keep up with rent
