Nico Martinez’s voice wavered as he talked about keeping his family calm for three years despite fearing they and about 400 others would be evicted from Buena Vista Mobile Home Park.

“Wherever we go, we’re still going to be together as a family,” Martinez assures Angel, 9, and Nicolas, 12.

The boys, arms wrapped around their dad, say they don’t want to leave.

“This is, like, a safe place and there’s no bad people here,” Nicolas said.

The exchange between Martinez and his boys is part of a 25-minute documentary by filmmaker Elizabeth Lo about the struggle of the mobile home park’s low-income, mostly Latino residents, who could lose their homes if property owners close the site at 3980 El Camino Real.

Many Buena Vista residents own their mobile homes and could move them, but doing so would be difficult and costly and there are few places to put them.

Lo’s documentary also explores the greater issue of how development in Silicon Valley threatens the lifestyles of many people, particularly of minority families who add to the diversity of cities such as Palo Alto.

“Notes from Buena Vista” was featured this week as part of Affordable Housing Week 2016, an annual event in Santa Clara County.

Lo said she was blown away by the “strength, resilience and eloquence” of Buena Vista residents she met in the past nine months and her documentary seeks to bring more awareness to their plight.

“To me, these are glimpses into the working class struggle in the area,” Lo said before Tuesday’s film screening at the Landmark Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto.

“These are people who are providing backbone services to homes and industries throughout Silicon Valley and find themselves sometimes in positions where they have to give up” their homes and jobs because of a shortage of affordable housing, Lo said.

The documentary features residents like Amanda Serrano, who has lived at Buena Vista for seven years with her dog.

“When I buy this place, it was the happiest day,” Serrano said of her mobile home.

Rene Escalante, a 19-year resident of Buena Vista, said it has been “mas facil,” very difficult, to make ends meet in Silicon Valley. He pieced together multiple minimum wage jobs over the years, from carpentry to landscaping, to provide for his family.

Escalante said he would have liked to study law, which would have helped in the residents’ legal fight with Buena Vista property owners.

Escalante’s daughter, Erika Escalante, grew up in the mobile home park and bought her own unit a year before residents got notice of the closure.

Eviction would mean living elsewhere from her dad and disrupting their network of 19 extended relatives at the park, and so the community continues to stand up for their homes, she said.

“We’re still here. We’re still fighting. We’re not giving up,” Erika Escalante said after the screening.

The past 3 ½ years have been filled with highs and lows for these families and countless others.

Residents have lived with the uncertainty of their housing situation ever since park property owners, Toufic and Eva Jisser, filed an application to close the site in November 2012.

Martinez and his sons cried tears of sorrow in May 2015 at City Hall when the Palo Alto City Council approved the Jissers’ application to close the park.

They were hopeful and jubilant, months later, as city officials got the OK to put $14.5 million toward buying and preserving the mobile home park.

The Jissers, however, rejected an offer in August 2015 from Caritas, a nonprofit which has rescued 20 mobile home parks statewide. The county hired Caritas to make an offer using $29 million in affordable housing funds set aside by the Palo Alto council and the county’s Board of Supervisors.

Today, the park’s closure remains in limbo as residents, the property owners and the city work out differences in court.

The Buena Vista Mobile Home Park Residents Association filed a lawsuit against the city in August, seeking to overturn the council’s decision and, at the minimum, a larger relocation assistance package for tenants than required by the city.

The Jissers contend that they were forced to reject the Caritas offer to buy the property because of the lawsuit filed by residents. The association said it waited until the last day it could to file when no deal materialized between the Jissers and Caritas.

In November 2015, the Jissers filed a lawsuit against the city after the city required the owners to pay $8 million in tenant relocation assistance as a condition to close the park. The Jissers say that is a “staggering financial demand” and asserted their constitutional property rights. The city has asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed and a hearing is scheduled May 26.

Kyra Kazantzis, an attorney of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley that is representing the residents association, said in a panel discussion after the film screening on Tuesday that the courts “is not where we want to fight it out.”

In answering a question about the status of the case and what more the community can do, Kazantzis encouraged government officials to hold on to the money that is available for preservation, in case the Jissers decide to sell, and perhaps continue to fundraise.

“There is a number that would be enough,” Kazantzis said. “There is a number in which the owner would be willing to sell the lot.”

Because of the exorbitant cost of Silicon Valley land, city and county officials and affordable housing advocates struggle to acquire land to establish affordable housing, Kazantzis added.

Kazantzis said the legal foundation decided to represent the residents association in this “quintessential fair housing case” in part because of the loss of diversity that would result if the park closes.

“(Buena Vista) singlehandedly diversifies Palo Alto and the school district,” Kazantzis said after the documentary screening. “Once it’s gone, it’s never coming back. Residents will be dispersed to the winds and you’ll lose the precious thing you just saw.”

Kazantzis, Erika Escalante (president of the residents association) and Amado Padilla, a Stanford University professor who authored a report on the mobile home park residents’ health and education, were part of a panel on Buena Vista and affordable housing after the screening on Tuesday. Joe Simitian, county supervisor representing the fifth district, made closing remarks.

A trailer of the film and details of Lo’s project can be found at www.elizabeth-lo.com.

Email Jacqueline Lee at jlee1@bayareanewsgroup.com or call her at 650-391-1334; follow her at twitter.com/jleenews.