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ASSOCIATED PRESS January 29, 2008
Judge delays ruling on whether to shut down migrant housing camp
By Gillian Flaccus ASSOCIATED PRESS
RIVERSIDE – Thousands of migrant workers who live in a mobile home park on tribal land southeast of Los Angeles will have to wait a little longer to learn if their encampment will be shut down by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson was expected to rule Monday on whether to send federal marshals to close the encampment and evict its residents, but just hours before the hearing he issued an order delaying a decision for two weeks. It wasn't immediately clear why Larson pushed the hearing to Feb. 11 and calls to representatives from both sides weren't immediately returned. The government has been trying to close Desert Mobile Home Park for several years because of alleged health and safety violations, including raw sewage in the streets, inadequate drinking water and a jerry-rigged electrical system. Because the park is on Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian land, it is exempt from state and local health and safety codes. Larson took an extensive tour of the park last month to see the conditions firsthand. At a hearing earlier this month, Larson indicated he would shutter the park unless its owner, Harvey Duro Sr., presented a detailed plan to fix electricity, water and sewage systems by Monday's hearing. The judge could order the park closed immediately or he could give residents several weeks or months to find other housing. But closing the park, which is in the fertile Coachella Valley about 130 miles southeast of Los Angeles, would flood an already overwhelmed affordable housing market in surrounding Riverside County. The county currently has a 40,000-person waiting list for subsidized or low-income housing, with no new units expected before 2010. The only other affordable apartments are at least 90 minutes away and some are as far as the Mexican border, according to papers filed Friday. Cheap housing is key for the 4,000 migrant workers who live in the Desert Mobile Home Park during peak harvest season and for the region's economy. The migrants, who make as little as $15,000 annually, pick some of the nearly $1 billion worth of table grapes, dates, chili peppers and other crops that the region yields each year. At a hearing earlier this month, local and federal officials said they had made little progress in finding alternative housing for the workers. Last month, the judge urged county supervisors, religious charities and non-profit housing groups to attend Monday's hearing; some groups have already been meeting with the U.S. Attorney's office, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and county officials regularly. The conflict between Duro and the federal government began in the late 1990s, when Duro opened 40 acres of his sovereign land to migrant workers during a crackdown on illegal trailer parks on county land. Last summer, a fire displaced 120 residents, and the BIA paid for an independent inspection that launched the government's latest drive to shut the park down. That inspection found sewage wastewater several inches deep, dead rodents, swarms of flies and animal feces at the encampment, as well as inadequate drinking water, a dangerous electrical system, severe overcrowding and fire hazards, according to court papers. A fire department report filed with the court Friday says at the most recent fire two weeks ago, crews found severely overloaded power outlets, no smoke detectors and woefully inadequate water pressure while fighting to save a trailer there. They also found two 5-gallon propane tanks sitting on the kitchen table in the burning unit, according to the court papers.
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