After cancer and bankruptcy, a family gets the keys – again – to a home they built themselves

Amy DiPierro | Palm Springs Desert Sun

Show Caption Hide Caption Self help homes in Coachella A participant in the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition's Mutual Self-Help Housing program talks about finally getting the keys to her new home.

Ciria Olivas knows what it’s like to dig a foundation under the summer sun. She’s done it twice.

Olivas is one of almost 2,000 homeowners in Riverside and Imperial counties to build their own houses under the supervision of the nonprofit Coachella Valley Housing Coalition (CVHC) since 1987. Today, CVHC’s Mutual Self-Help Program has used funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build houses in rural communities from Brawley to Desert Hot Springs.

Olivas and her family labored alongside their neighbors for a year to build their first home in 2004 – only to lose it eight years later, after a cancer diagnosis in the family put their household finances in jeopardy.

But on the morning of May 17, for the second time, Olivas was presented with the keys to a house that she and her neighbors constructed from the ground up.

“We’re finally going to move in,” Olivas said, “so (I’m) very excited.”

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In 2000, Olivas and her husband Miguel, and her three children were living with her mother in Coachella.

They had owned a trailer on Avenue 70 in Thermal, surrounded by agricultural fields. But the winters were cold, and when the wind picked up, dust and dirt would sweep through the trailer. It wasn’t an ideal home for the family – and especially not for their youngest son, Martin, who was born with heart problems and was susceptible to infection following a transplant.

There, in her mother’s house, Olivas dreamed of owning her own home.

“We wanted the house because, at least in our opinion, a house has more value,” she said. “You live more comfortably in a house. We already had the experience of living in a mobile home. A house is a more stable thing to have.”

Olivas put her name on the interest list for the Mutual Self-Help Program. She waited.

Behind the scenes, the nonprofit was doing what it always does: looking for residential lots.

Emilia Mojica has been working for the CVHC for 28 years, starting as a receptionist and working her way up to become the nonprofit’s Director of Single Family Development. She says the trick is finding land that meets certain criteria.

First, it has to be located in a rural area with 35,000 people or fewer, which makes it eligible for financing through the USDA’s Single Family Housing Direct Home Loans program, also known as Section 502.

Second, the land can’t be too expensive, which makes it harder to build a house cheaply enough for the families buying them to qualify for construction loans.

And finally, the lots have to be close together, so that the nonprofit and the families building their homes can easily move from one site to the next.

“A lot of developers had undeveloped subdivisions,” after the recession, Mojica said. “We were able to buy these infill lots.”

CVHC then continues the process any homebuilder would follow, submitting plans for proposed houses to city and county planners for approval.

Homebuyers like Ciria Olivas are on the other side of the equation.

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While the nonprofit is out in the market looking for the right piece of land, it’s also building a pipeline of potential clients. CVHC’s interest list for the Mutual Self-Help Program is 9,000 names long today, Mojica said.

Then, the nonprofit sends out fliers inviting applications when a new CVHC project nears construction, Mojica said.

To qualify, applicants must show that they are without what the USDA calls decent, safe and sanitary housing. They must also show that their income falls at or below the low-income limit, and that they are able to repay a loan.

Homeowners receive a fixed-rate mortgage and can receive subsidies to reduce their monthly mortgage payment and effective interest rate. Families repay the subsidies in full when they transfer title to the property or move out of the home, according to the USDA.

Once the fliers go out, Mojica says, some would-be buyers will decide they aren’t interested after all. Some might find out they don’t qualify.

And some will become homeowners.

The Olivas family and their future neighbors started digging the foundations of their first self-help home in June 2003, in the community of North Shore beside the Salton Sea.

The families purchased their lots and CVHC provided what it calls “technical assistance” to the homeowners, bidding on materials, supervising construction and hiring subcontractors, for example.

Shovels and hammers in hand, the families worked two eight-hour work days on Saturdays and Sundays, weekend after weekend, for a year, Olivas recalled. The beginning was the most difficult part.

“It was the summer, so it was very hot,” Olivas said, “and of course it was very hard.”

The families built the houses all at once, pouring the slabs at the first house, the second and so on. Then, they went and raised each frame. They continued like this until, a year after they started, they were finally finished.

“Nobody gets to move in," Mojica said, "until all of the houses are completed."

Olivas was excited and relieved. But building the house wouldn’t be the last challenge her family faced.

Her husband worked in the agricultural fields in Thermal and Mecca at the time, and Olivas herself was working at a Jack in the Box in Bermuda Dunes. Meanwhile, in 2008, their son Martin was diagnosed with cancer.

The family refinanced their home. Olivas stopped working so she could care for him and take him to appointments at Loma Linda University Medical Center, an hour and a half north in San Bernardino County.

Since she had quit her job, the family had trouble making their monthly home payments.

“When you’re missing that other income, everything starts piling up,” she said. “Things happen, and you can’t catch up.”

At first, the refinancing seemed to be helping, but there was trouble on the horizon.

The family's monthly mortgage payments increased from about $750 to $1,000, Olivas remembers. In November 2010, she and her husband Miguel filed for bankruptcy and later they defaulted on their home loan.

The house sold in 2012 in a trustee’s sale. The family rented an apartment in Coachella, moving a few times before they settled into the rental where they’ve lived for the past three years.

Olivas, sharing an apartment with her husband and Martin, longed for privacy, and space.

“It is better to have your own house,” she said, “because it’s a little bit more freedom.”

Olivas learned, through the housing coalition, that it was possible for her family to build under the self-help housing program again.

This time, the nonprofit was planning a community just where Olivas wanted to be: Coachella. In the summer of 2016, Miguel and Ciria Olivas, joined by 12 other families, began digging a foundation and erecting metal beams under the hot summer sun.

“We started in July,” Olivas said. “I was like, ‘Oh, no. Not again.’”

The families also completed classes to prepare them for home ownership, covering topics like budgeting, the importance of paying their home bills on time and watching out for predatory lending.

On May 17, almost two years after they started building, the Olivas were done. The families gathered under a tent on their cul-de-sac, shielded from the mid-morning sun.

The ceremony was a graduation of sorts. There were words from government officials, and from CVHC personnel. Each family received a certificate congratulating the families on completing their homes – and a pair of keys.

Later this summer, CVHC will complete its 2,000th home. It will be in Coachella, and it will likely be one of the last self-help homes built in that city.

Since the Mutual Self-Help Program began, the valley has become more densely populated, and places like Coachella are now too big to qualify for 502 funding, which targets areas with fewer than 35,000 people.

Aside from unincorporated county land, Desert Hot Springs is the only city in the Coachella Valley still eligible.

The nonprofit is seeking alternative funding so it can continue building self-help homes in areas that are not eligible for 502 funding through the USDA.

Amy DiPierro covers real estate and business for The Desert Sun. Reach her at amy.dipierro@desertsun.com.