City Council approves $1.4 million purchase of Union Avenue motel

For decades, the Ramkabir Motel on Union Avenue offered cheap, albeit grimy living for the city’s poor and impoverished.

Then last fall, days before Halloween, a structure fire left several rooms in ruin and instigated Pacific Gas and Electric to shut off gas lines to the site. Residents were left without power, said Bakersfield City Councilman Andrae Gonzales.

The Bakersfield City Council on Wednesday pledged to purchase the Ramkabir Motel for $1.4 million, with plans to convert the 37-unit site into affordable housing.

Gonzales helped earmark the money, derived from the city’s remaining balance of funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, for the city to purchase the property this fiscal year and begin renovations by late summer.

Just a mile and a half from City Hall, the neighborhood — especially between East 4th Street and California Avenue — is besieged by every element of crime found in Bakersfield. Prostitution and drug use happen in plain view, casual and shameless. Stores are ransacked, cars are stripped. Many malefactors who operate along this half-mile strip, from the Subway to Great Castle Chinese, stay in one of the half-dozen motels, some running as cheap as $47 per night.

“There is issue after issue that compounds one another,” Gonzales said of Union Avenue.

But these motels are vanishing, Gonzales said, leaving even more people to fend for themselves on the streets.

This came as city and county officials released a new census last week that found homelessness in Kern has risen 37% since their last poll a year ago. Nearly half, officials found, live in Bakersfield city limits.

With the continued rise in the number of homeless people, officials desperately seek prospective sites for more affordable housing. Renovations of existing sites like motels, Gonzales said, are a “win-win-win” because it’s often significantly cheaper to update existing living spaces than it is to build anew.”

“The community can debate whether we need more enforcement or closing down encampments or we need more outreach or supportive services,” Gonzales said. “But at the end of the day it all comes down to one thing: housing.”

But they’re not cheap. Some of these motels are valued at up to $96,000 per unit. The 50-unit La Mirage Motel down the street, for example, is listed for sale at $2.25 million.

Renovations at the Ramkabir Motel are also not going to be cheap — Gonzales expects that to cost another $1.2 million, provided through state grant money not yet identified. Before the fire, the building had racked up a history of hazardous living conditions: exposed wiring, broken windows, rodents and roaches, mold — 24 code violations since 2003. It has since October been left vacant, abandoned by its owners. The city secured it at a county foreclosure auction in April.

Similar complaints extend to nearby motels.

“These buildings have deferred maintenance issues that go unmet,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales said he would like the property to eventually be absorbed within the city’s community land trust program, and managed by a local service provider that is familiar with the neighborhood and its needs.

In other news, the Bakersfield City Council:

• Reviewed the city’s plans for how they plan to spend more than $7 million in federal grants in the coming fiscal year. The city proposed spending plans for the fifth and final year of the Consolidated Plan 2025, which details funding priorities through federal grants like Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnership Program, and Housing Opportunities for Persons with HIV/AIDS, among others. The money, under the plan, will go toward street reconstruction, lighting fixtures and rental assistance, among other things.

• Approved the $395,000 purchase of portable vehicle barriers to be used by the police department. These would be used for city-sponsored events that draw crowds of people. Currently, city police use dump trucks to form vehicle blockades on major routes downtown, which cost up to $10,000 per event.

• Agreed to spend up to $958,000 for a replacement of the LED Bowl Ribbon at Mechanics Bank Arena. The current screen system is 15 years old, according to city documents, and has reportedly been experiencing technical issues at recent live events. The chosen bid by Revel Media was the cheapest of five that the city received from vendors.