Last Resort : Sam Porter’s Ranch Is Home for Some of the Working Homeless

In the shadow of the twin peaks of Saddleback, high on a bluff overlooking Trabuco Creek lies Sam Porter’s 300-acre Trabuco Highlands Ranch and, on it, one of Orange County’s most unlikely housing developments.

Though the views are gorgeous, the rents are rock-bottom. The homes, some in a cluster and others scattered around the property, are a barn-like building, a converted boxcar, an old school bus, several travel trailers and an assortment of tents and homemade cabins.

None has electrical service, though several do have generators. Refrigerators run on propane. There is one telephone among them. The road leading in is a tortuous, rocky dirt ribbon that runs through two neighboring plant nurseries.

To some who live here it is a refuge from homelessness and, perhaps, a local address to qualify their children for admission to public school. To others, it is an escape from city living, city problems and city rents.

No one seems to have any desire to leave.

Welcome to what Sam Porter and some of the residents call Porterville. A more fitting name might be Sam Porterville, for though Sam’s wife, Jeanne, and three of his six children live here with him, the ranch as it is today is almost exclusively the product of the will of its craggy-faced, 57-year-old owner.

“It’s sort of like the images of old Mexico, where every piece of land was run by its own patron ,” says Jeanne, who doesn’t share all her husband’s philosophies but, when it comes to running the ranch, submits to them mostly with good humor.

Sam said he and Jeanne have “had some sharp disagreements about things here, but when it comes right down to it, I own this place, I paid for it, and what I say goes.”

Sam Porter’s political philosophies are intertwined with the reasons Porterville exists.

A self-described “militant pro-growther,” he believes the county’s development policies have not allowed for enough housing for low-income workers, whom Porter calls “the underpinning of Orange County employees.”

Porter is especially incensed over the practice of requiring developers to give up part of each large parcel as permanent open space.

“It’s nothing but extortion and coercion,” he said. He said abandonment of such “restrictive” policies would open the way to the building of enough affordable housing.

Meanwhile, Porter has opened his ranch to more than a dozen individuals, couples and families. Local park rangers have learned to refer homeless people to Porter when their allotted time in public campgrounds is running out.

Porter bought the boxcar, the school bus and several trailers for them to live in.

The boxcar rents for $250 a month. Some of the trailers are as much as $175 monthly, and other rents are lower. Some of the tenants are single men, mostly Latinos, who work at the nurseries. They said they pay as little as $60 a month each.

Porter said that he benefits from the rental income, which totals about $2,000 a month, but that his original purpose in opening the land was “to give some people a place to live while they get on their feet.” Porterville has become something more than that now.

With the exception of children and their mothers, everyone who lives there is expected to hold a job.

“There isn’t anyone living here who doesn’t work. Anyone who thinks they’re going to come here and just kick back is sadly mistaken,” Porter said.

Porter believes in long work days for himself. He runs the ranch, works as a building contractor and occasionally sells real estate. At the back of his property, which borders Cleveland National Forest, is a stream that supplies water in summer to the nearby nurseries, through the ranch’s Porter Water Co.

For Peggy Clark, 29, a mother of three, living in Porterville is the only way she can remain in Orange County while her fiancee, Ray Jackson, works.

Clark, who arrived last June from Louisville, Ky., said she, Jackson and her children lived in county parks until October. They were nearing the end of their time limit as campers when they met a Porterville resident who told them about the ranch.

“When I first called Sam and told him about us, he said, ‘You have to get those kids in school. You just have to,’ ” Clark said. The children, ages 6, 9 and 10, are going to a public grammar school near the ranch.

Clark and Jackson pay $170 a month for a trailer, where the children sleep. Several feet away, under a makeshift wooden frame, is a large tent where Clark and Jackson stay. They also have two dogs and a cat, and keep seven chickens in a coop next to the tent. Clark said the chickens provide them with about half a dozen eggs a day.

Porterville has enabled them to stay in Orange County, Clark said, “considering that anything else big enough to accommodate us here would cost $1,100 a month, plus the last month’s rent and security deposit.”

Clark said she left Louisville because “you couldn’t buy a job back there.” She said Jackson earns $6 an hour as a laborer at a housing project near the ranch--”enough for us to get by on.”

Yet the family isn’t struggling, Clark insisted.

“When we lived back East we were in the (public housing) projects. That was struggling. It’s such a relief here that I don’t have to worry about the kids.”

She called Porter a “very fair” landlord, and said he has paid her to do paper work for him occasionally. Until recently, she and Jackson had no car, she said, and the Porters always asked if they could pick up anything for them when they went to town.

Bret Adams, 26, and Sherry Schaffer, 21, have occupied the boxcar for two years. For them it’s an escape from city living and a way to save money.

“I grew up in El Toro when it was nothing but orange groves,” said Adams. “Up here, it’s not like the city, where everyone’s got their nose in everybody’s business.”

Adams said he and Schaffer may leave the boxcar and build their own cabin on ranch property. Porter already has agreed to it, he said. “Sam’s pretty cool. He gets a little stubborn here and there, but he’s pretty cool.”

The residents interviewed said there generally is peace among them, although there is little socializing among those who were not friends before they arrived.

Sam Porter says drinking and drugs are a waste of money and the time needed to earn it, but he does not enforce any prohibitions on his tenants. He observed, however, that “some of their problems are caused by a lack of discipline.”

When a tenant refuses to hold a job, fails to control his or her children or creates a disturbance, Porter says, “We have to push ‘em out.” Porter persuades, rather than evicts. “I just gradually show them increasing amounts of criticism and displeasure, until they decide they don’t want to take the hassles.”

Jeanne Porter, 35, teaches English and four other languages while doubling as assistant principal at the nearby Joplin High School for male wards of the county Juvenile Court. She said the root of her disagreements with Sam has been the direction Porterville has taken.

“The original idea was to give some people living in the park time to get on their feet, but at times it turns into handouts,” she said.

“We agree there are some people who need a helping hand, but there were two or three that took more effort than a dozen. They relied on us for transportation, phone calls (the only telephone is in the Porter house) and money.”

Jeanne also does not share her husband’s philosophy of land use.

“I’m glad the county does demand some park space,” of builders, she said, adding that developers “would do what is most cost-effective for them” if there were no such policy.

If prices are too high to allow everyone who desires it to live in the county, “perhaps some people shouldn’t live here,” she said.

Sam Porter is a multimillionaire now, but most of that wealth is the land. He bought the ranch for $1,500 an acre in 1976. With development pushing farther into the Trabuco Canyon area, adjacent land recently sold for $55,000 an acre, he said.

The tenants are hardly an economic necessity, though Porter said their rents “help pay the taxes.” Nevertheless, he is preparing for an even larger group of people being priced out of Orange County housing.

“There’s a housing code crackdown in Santa Ana now that they should have spread over 10 years instead of doing it all at once,” he said. Porter said he is preparing to help those who will be left homeless by that crackdown.

“I’ve got 16 army tents waiting out back,” he said. “I’m ready.”