Hope Renewed in Santa Cruz

It’s been four long years since Christine Harper saw the 2020 CZU lightning fire take her 80-year-old home, plus her greenhouse and hay barn on the 20-acre organic farm she and her husband had created in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Recently widowed, Christine got right to work, filing an insurance claim and paying off her home loan. She also bought the excavator and skid steer they would need to get things operating again.

Then she began to take steps toward rebuilding the house – paying contractors and county fees to meet the county’s pre-clearance requirements and reestablishing the power lines.

Christine’s mountain farm has plenty of room for MDS RVs.

And that was it. The insurance money and other resources she was able to scrape together ran out. The prospects of construction looked hopeless.

Christine, however, never lost hope, and eventually the Santa Cruz local recovery team came alongside proposing an MDS volunteer-built home.

But where would the volunteers stay? The remote location north of Santa Cruz with almost 4 miles of dirt and gravel road meant a commute of more than an hour from the closest church or camp housing.

Thinking outside the box, the MDS group wondered about a mobile camp. They approached Christine tentatively: What if we would bring some mobile housing to create a camp right here on your property?

She didn’t hesitate a moment: Yes, of course. There’s plenty of room here and the volunteers are welcome to tap into my water, power and septic system.

It looks like the hope that Christine has held onto these four years will bear fruit as California Unit lays plans for a project spring 2025.