Twin Rivers, formerly known as Dos Rios, sits inside the curve made where the American and Sacramento rivers meet.
It's in a neighborhood consisting largely of a collection of warehouses, light industrial, office space, and a sprinkling of social services. In the rain last week with trees mowed down to the roots in preparation for demolition, it was positively desolate.
A rare bright spot is Blanca Caro’s home, where flowering fruit trees are clustered around her door. Caro has lived in several different units of Twin Rivers over 29 years. She moved in when she was 28 years old, in 1989. Her 21-year-old son attended a school across the street.
Caro talked about the fruit trees in her front yard, the doves she was fostering in the back, about barbecues, friendly neighbors and all the ephemera of half a lifetime’s worth of memories.
“It is very, very hard,” she said of the demolition of her home of many years.
The neighborhood is friendly, Caro said. Although there are occasional problems, mostly it’s quiet, and people look out for one another. She provides neighbors with fruit from her trees, and even the UPS driver stops off to pick up a bag of apricots when they’re in season.
Twin Rivers/Dos Rios’ history goes back decades.
It was built in the early 1940s, then expanded in the 1970s and is the city’s oldest public housing development. However, the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency deems it "an isolated and disconnected community" hemmed in by railroad tracks, levees and rivers.
“The systems and infrastructure at Twin Rivers have reached the end of their useful life, existing buildings do not conform to the current seismic standards and the units no longer meet the needs of today’s families,” according to information on the SHRA website.
In response, the agency obtained a grant to develop a Neighborhood Transformational Plan to update the aged complex. A new development at the site is intended to provide housing for both low and moderate-income residents. It's also connecting it better with surrounding areas with a new Blue-line light rail stop, better streets and "physical connections" to downtown and across the American River.
Although SHRA has contracted with a company to work one-on-one with Twin Rivers’ families to help them find housing, and they are to have the opportunity to move back into the new complex, residents greet the prospect of moving with varying degrees of trepidation.
Ruth and Abraham Beaver have lived there about 10 years, with their Chihuahua, Chrissie, in are their apartment with a friend who helps out.
“I don’t know – wherever they put us,” said Ruth, 92, in response to where they would go when they have to leave.
Although she said she liked the apartment, she did not mind having to move, but Abraham was less cheerful about it.
“I don’t feel like moving,” he said.
Across the way, Ramona Koch, was more vocal about her displeasure.
Although she feels the neighborhood has declined since she moved-in more than 15 years ago, the uncertainty of the impending move had her on edge. She wasn’t sure where she would be going, or even when she had to go.
Koch said she got along with most of her neighbors, particularly the older ones, but some of the newer residents caused problems: petty theft, noise, and even a recent shooting incident. The homeless that congregated across North 12th tended to spill over, and not long ago she awoke to a homeless man sleeping on her porch.
But she was settled there.
“I’d rather stay here than move, but I have no choice,” she said.
Koch felt somber about the loss of the shade trees that once softened the harsh edges of the buildings.
“It’s sad,” she said. “I wish they wouldn’t take them down.”
Those who no longer will live there worry about what will happen to those who call it home, amid Sacramento’s soaring housing market.
Former resident, Alfredo Garcia, spent the most valuable time of his life at Twin Rivers because it was then he met his teacher, coach and mentor, Bill Condos, who kept him out of trouble as a youth. Condos was his neighbor, a sixth grade teacher at Twin Rivers. and also volunteered to coach the boys’ basketball team.
“Through basketball he encouraged us to work hard,” Garcia said, adding that Condos held his athletes to a high standard and had the respect of even the neighborhood toughs.
In the classroom, and on the court, Condos helped shape Garcia into the man he became altering his life’s trajectory. One day when Garcia was about 25 years old, he happened to run into Condos in the street and Condos asked him about his life, which Garcia replied he was "doing okay, working".
“You need an education,” he told Garcia. “Go sign up on Monday."
“Do you think I can do it?" Garcia responded.
Garcia started out at American River College and finished with a degree from U.C. Berkeley. The night he walked across the stage to get his degree was a highlight of his life.
“I felt like I hit the lottery, coming from that neighborhood,” he said.
Condos and his daughter took that triumphant walk with him, to simultaneously honor Condos and show his daughter what it felt like to graduate from college. Garcia’s daughter just completed her own degree in business.
“If I had not met him, I don’t know how my life would have turned out,” Garcia said.
Dos Rios had a strong sense of community, but it was also a rough place for kids to grow up. There were gangs and drugs and the various pitfalls.
“It was no walk in the park,” Garcia said.
But it was the people who made the difference, like Condos, according to Garcia.
“Somebody like that is a game-changer to a community,” Garcia said. “He really changed a lot of people’s lives there – it’s incredible.”
Twin Rivers’ redevelopment will more than double the occupancy rates in the corridor, and although officials say residents will have the opportunity to return, Garcia who was the legislative director for the Sacramento Builder’s Exchange, sees some troubling signs of gentrification in the plans for the complex.
He is concerned about elderly neighbors still living there and feels an obligation to look out for them -- just as Condos did for him.
“Me growing up there and having a Berkeley education – I can’t turn a blind eye,” he said. If growing up at Dos Rios taught him anything, it is to speak up against injustice.
“Sometimes you have to really speak up, you have to speak loudly,” he continued. “Sometimes you have to make a lot of noise. You have to really demand justice because they’re not going to just give it to you.”
