"When Umbelina Martinez's family first came to the United States decades ago, from Michoacan, Mexico, they settled in a three-bedroom house in Redwood City, Calif. It wasn't all theirs; 25 people lived on the property, sharing a single bathroom. Martinez's family of eight squeezed into one bedroom. "My mom and dad had to step over us kids to get to the door," she recalls."
""Who wouldn't wish to live in Palo Alto?" she asks, seated in her kitchen, which doubles as a living room, dining room, and storage space. Its thin walls are painted pale green, and there is a black refrigerator set against one wall, topped with a TV monitor. (The small quarters call for some creative design.) Kiwis and oranges rest on a tiny table pushed so close to the door that it almost touches."
Umbelina Martinez immigrated from Michoacan and experienced extreme overcrowding in a shared Redwood City house. She now lives in a 200-square-foot mobile home in Palo Alto's Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, where over 100 trailers house about 400 residents. Most residents are working-class immigrants employed in nearby restaurants, hair salons, and construction. Families pay around $1,400 monthly for rent and utilities despite Palo Alto's median home price of $3.2 million. Trailers range from two- to three-room units, often housing extended families, pets, and small gardens, with tightly packed living spaces and creative interior arrangements.
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