The group of kids raced back and forth at the fork in the road. The street, already vibrating with the sound of the nearby freeway, filled with cheers and the twang of a soccer ball.
And then — a loud crash. Several players let out gasps. A tiny, green-shirted goalie covered his mouth. A wild kick had sent the ball hurtling toward a neighbor’s yard ornaments.
“He kicked the ball and the plant fell,” Kevin Valdez, 12, said.
The occasional flying soccer ball has become an unfortunate but common occurrence for the residents of the Brentwood mobile home community in Southwest Chula Vista. Dozens of young families live there, but many kids have nowhere to go. So they play in the streets, dodging the neighbors’ cars and diving into nearby yards to retrieve stray balls.
“The neighbors complain because they can break a window, they can destroy their plants,” said Ana Ramirez, Kevin’s mom. “And yeah, they can. But because they’re kids — they don't want to be inside.”
Things weren’t always like this. For over a decade, Brentwood residents had Harborside Park — a sprawling green park with benches, basketball courts and a skate park — just a few blocks away. Many families recall fond memories of taking walks to the park for a game of basketball or to play in the grass.
But since last summer, Harborside has sat empty. The city council fenced off the park in August 2022 to evict dozens of unhoused residents and is now considering selling or leasing the land for housing, potentially closing the park for good.
The possibility of losing Harborside altogether has rippled throughout West Chula Vista. It’s been a particular source of frustration for the Brentwood community, where the park’s closure has already unsettled everyday life.
Some residents grumble about the commotion from kids playing in the roads. Others worry about the kids’ safety. All said they wanted the city to weigh the future of the park very carefully.
“Angry is the word, probably. Because the city don’t hear us,” Ramirez said. “Our kids need the park.”
When Harborside Park opened in 2006, many neighbors in Brentwood and across Southwest Chula Vista were thrilled.
Ramirez remembers walking over to the new park every Saturday. It was where her younger kids would play on the swings, where her older son would practice soccer and where her family would hold parties and get together with friends.
“All the things you can do at a park,” she said.
Public parks have incredible value to the communities around them, especially for families and young children. Studies have shown that they promote exercise, reduce stress, keep the neighborhood cooler on hot days and even raise the value of nearby homes.
Chula Vista has a big disparity in where parks are located. In 2021, the city’s west side had less than a third of the parks that the east side had, according to a now-dissolved city working group called the Growth Management Oversight Commission.
So it made all the more difference that Harborside, one of few green spaces near the Brentwood mobile home community, was just a few blocks away.
In recent years though, the relationship between Harborside and the surrounding neighborhoods grew complicated as unhoused residents began taking shelter in the park.
For some people, the park was a reliable place to sleep, especially amid the economic turmoil of the pandemic. But Harborside Park is also located directly next door to Harborside Elementary School, where a number of kids from Brentwood are enrolled. And some residents said the encampment was creating an unsafe environment for students.
After a long debate, the city council decided to temporarily close Harborside. Last summer, city workers swept the park, evicting dozens of people and raising a chain-link fence around the perimeter. They said it would just be for a few months.
At first, some Brentwood residents said they were relieved. But months went by, then a year, and the park remained closed. Then, in May, the city council made the surprise decision to explore leasing or selling Harborside’s land for housing.
The news was a shock to many in Chula Vista. City staff had prepared a reopening plan that would use federal American Rescue Plan funding to renovate the park and bring down the fences within a year. They had also held surveys on the proposed renovations, neither of which had mentioned closing the park for good. One survey did ask whether residents would be interested in building affordable housing in the park.
Instead, a majority of the city council voted to reject the staff reopening proposal and look at other options.
Now, many Brentwood residents are watching closely as the city weighs the future of Harborside Park. If the city does vote to permanently close the park, many families will lose their main green space nearby.
Residents said they are also increasingly frustrated that the city has not done more to help the unhoused people pushed out of Harborside. Many people have since relocated to a nearby median along the trolley tracks, just across the street from the mobile home community.
At a recent city council workshop, city staff said the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System is the authority responsible for overseeing that strip of land.
The council has not yet made a final decision on what to do with the park.
Meanwhile, Valdez, the 12-year-old soccer player, hopes to see the park open again soon.
“I would like to see the park reopen so we would have more space and more places to go play,” he said. “And other kids can come and hang around and everything.”
-
Jacob AereThey’ve gone to federal court to try to keep the city from evicting them because they say they have “no place to go.” -
Matthew BowlerService groups were on hand to help provide resources for the dozens of homeless people who were displaced.
