|
March 18, 2008
Ramshackle Duros settlement poses problems not easy to solve for
Riverside County or federal court
Maria López is tired of living in a place with dirty tap water and
telephone service that goes out every time the wind blows too hard.
Daniel Canchola worries about his kids' health from sewage pouring out
of a plastic pipe onto the dirt under and around his trailer.
Francisco Zamora wonders whether ash from frequent fires at a nearby
dump with toxic materials may have contaminated the ground he and his
children walk on every day.
All three live in Desert Mobile Home Park, a sprawling, ramshackle
collection of trailers near the Salton Sea that the federal government
says is so dangerous that it should be shut down.
After two federal lawsuits -- the first filed in 2003 -- a judge could
rule as early as April 28 whether to close the park, which is often
called "Duros" or "Duroville."
Yet residents say that, no matter how bad the park is, it's better than
nothing.
"We don't want it to close," López said in Spanish, referring to the
park where at least 2,000 people live. "We want it to improve. We could
continue living here if they fixed things up a bit."
High housing costs are endemic throughout Southern California, but for
many farmworkers, packing-house employees and other low-wage workers in
the rural communities south of Indio, even a late-model trailer in a
clean, safe mobile-home park is an unaffordable luxury.
Riverside County officials estimate that 15,000 units are needed to
house all of the year-round residents and migrant farmworkers in the
eastern Coachella Valley who now either live in substandard or
overcrowded housing or are homeless.
About 30,000 people are on a waiting list for federally subsidized
Section 8 housing in Riverside County. In addition, there are more than
10,000 people on a list that the nonprofit Coachella Valley Housing
Coalition keeps for subsidized mobile homes, apartments and houses.
The housing shortage intensifies during peak spring harvests, when
hundreds of migrant workers sleep in dirt lots or fields and cram into
already overcrowded trailers. The population in Duros swells to up to
6,000, or an average of about 20 people per trailer. A recent survey
tallied 276 mobile homes; other counts found more than 350.
The county and the housing coalition are planning to open hundreds of
new units of housing in the next several years. Yet they acknowledge
those will not be nearly enough to meet the demand throughout the
Coachella Valley. Government money is limited, and private developers
have a hard time making money on low-income housing without subsidies.
"There is not an easy solution," said Mark Adams, the Santa Monica
lawyer whom U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Larson appointed last
month as a provisional receiver to make emergency improvements at the
trailer park and to recommend whether to close it down.
"You're not talking about wealthy retired people in Palm Springs," Adams
said. "You're talking about mobile homes for poor farmworkers. This is a
tough population to house."
Aiming for Safe, Not Plush
The dirt roads and dilapidated trailers of Desert Mobile Home Park are
only five miles from an airport used by wealthy horse owners flying in
to play at a nearby polo field. To the west are the hotels and manicured
golf courses of Palm Springs and other resort cities.
Adams said the park will never look like some of the mobile home
communities in the western Coachella Valley, where snowbirds lie by
pools by day and sleep in upscale mobile homes at night. His goal is to
give residents a safe, dignified place to live. He fears what will
happen if residents are left to fend for themselves.
But Adams acknowledges that the park may have to close. He is worried
that toxic material from the adjacent dump may have contaminated the
dirt in the park where barefoot children play. He has ordered soil
samples and analysis.
Riverside County wants the park shut down, but over at least two years,
while replacement housing is built. If the park does close, some
residents would be put at the top of waiting lists for new housing. But
undocumented immigrants, who some residents say comprise most of the
park's population, won't be eligible and would be forced into other
unsafe housing or put at risk of homelessness.
Principal owner Harvey Duro said he opened his park after a 1998 county
crackdown on code violations led to the closure of other parks. The land
is on the reservation of the Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians,
where Riverside County ordinances do not apply but some federal laws do.
Federal prosecutors filed suit against Duro in October, alleging he had
violated a 2004 court settlement by failing to clean up the park.
The government contends that Duros is riddled with health and
environmental problems, including a jerry-rigged electrical system,
dirty tap water and the backflow of sewage into trailers. A 2007 Bureau
of Indian Affairs report called an eventual outbreak of cholera, typhoid
fever or other diseases "highly likely."
Frequent fires at a dump next to Duros regularly sent smoke and ash
through the park, putting residents' health at risk, said Ray Paiz,
eastern division chief for the Riverside County Fire Department. The
federal government closed the dump in 2006, but the intense desert heat
sometimes causes waste to spontaneously combust.
Zamora, 43, wonders what long-term health problems the fires may have
caused him and his family. He agreed with the federal government that
conditions at Duros are bad.
"It's a pigsty," he said in Spanish as he walked down a pockmarked dirt
road that turns into a muddy trail after rain.
"I'm fine if they close it," said Zamora, who said he and eight family
members share a trailer in Duros because the $275 monthly space rent is
among the cheapest around. "It's ugly: the wires, the streets, all the
dust. But they (the government) aren't offering us any guarantees."
Until the government can give residents another place to live, he wants
the park kept open.
Federal prosecutors said in court that finding housing for Duros
residents is not their responsibility, although U.S. Attorney Thomas
O'Brien has met with county and nonprofit representatives to come up
with ways to avert mass displacement if Duros does close.
Afraid to Speak Up
Several residents who were interviewed declined to give their names,
fearing eviction. Cruz Navarro, 62, was among those who in January
signed legal papers filed by California Rural Legal Assistance asking
Larson to appoint Adams as receiver.
Navarro and other residents said some conditions have improved at Duros
since the 2003 lawsuit. Electricity outages are not as frequent. But the
lights sometimes still flicker or go out altogether. And sewage still
flows beneath his trailer and onto his dirt yard, Navarro said.
Canchola, 30, said he keeps his four young children inside when sewage
oozes from a white plastic pipe that sits above a narrow gravel path
behind his trailer.
The pipes lead to eight uncovered sewage ponds that lie within a few
dozen feet of trailers. Waste escapes from leaks and during maintenance.
Canchola bent down and lightly turned a plastic cap on the pipe. Fetid
black liquid bubbled up and spilled onto the gravel.
López, 34, recalled how the sewage occasionally used to form a small
pond in a bowl-shaped indentation in the ground next to her trailer. Her
husband, José, spent $120 of his minimum-wage salary on construction
debris, rocks and dirt to fill in the hole.
The stench of waste from the pipes and sewage ponds is suffocating in
summer, she said.
Above the chain-link fences and particle boards with protruding rusty
nails that line the sides of the gravel paths are tangles of white
cords. These are the park's telephone wires.
In spaces where the wires' white plastic coating is worn or broken off,
thin colored plastic wires are visible. The plastic is gone on sections
of those smaller wires as well, exposing the metal to the elements.
Down the street, dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of these flimsy wires
converge from the warren of passageways to drape a tall wooden pole.
López said the phones go out when it rains too hard, the humidity is too
high or the wind gusts. She sometimes receives her neighbors' phone
calls, and they receive hers. She estimated that her family spends as
much as $150 each year on telephone repairs.
The Lópezes have welcomed the changes that Adams is bringing to Duros.
He authorized contractors to inspect trailers and to fix the most
serious electrical problems. He banned dogs from running through the
streets. He is cleaning up the sewage ponds.
They said more changes like these would make Duros livable.
The Lópezes and others also said Duros is hardly an anomaly in the
eastern Coachella Valley. They've been in other parks that are just as
bad, they said.
Arturo Rodriguez, a lawyer with California Rural Legal Assistance, said
Duros "is the worst in the sense that it's the biggest." But he's seen
similar problems in other parks, both on tribal land and in
unincorporated county areas, he said.
There are currently fewer than 20 vacancies in the up-to-code mobile
home parks in the entire eastern Coachella Valley, said Emilio Ramirez,
the county's deputy director of housing.
If Larson were to close Duros at the April 28 court hearing, some
displaced residents would have little choice but to move to other
substandard mobile homes, live on the street or move into already
overcrowded trailers or homes.
Adams said the affordable-housing crisis in the eastern Coachella Valley
is so massive that it will take action from Washington and Sacramento to
make a real dent.
"I hope the public and press attention on Duroville will heat up the
whole issue of farmworker and migrant housing in Riverside County,"
Adams said. "Wouldn't it be great if the governor and the two senators
and congresspeople don't just look for solutions for the 276 units here
at Duros, but for the 5,000 units needed around the county?"
|