30 Families Defy Deadline to Relocate : Reprieve Possible if Riverside County Buys Trailer Park Land

The deadline for residents to move out of a rundown trailer park passed last weekend, but about 30 families are still encamped in the Corona Growers Trailer Park, in the Temescal Valley south of the city.

The residents--mostly legal immigrant farm workers from Mexico--learned a year ago that the park’s owner, Daon Corp. of Newport Beach, wanted them to leave so that it could sell the land for development.

Despite financial aid offered by Daon, many residents said they could not find another trailer park that would accept them, or could not afford to move their old trailers. And efforts by Riverside County officials to help the community relocate have repeatedly met with failure.

About half of the families who lived in the park a year ago have left, said Joe Hernandez, acting director of the county Department of Housing and Community Development.

He said that Daon and county officials have been discussing the possible sale of the trailer park to Riverside County, which could allow the park to remain open to low- and moderate-income families.

Hernandez said he is “going to try to see if I can get a proposal together in the next two weeks” to buy the park and and develop it with 100 trailer spaces by using about $1.2 million in federal community development block grant funds from the state and county.

Daon, he said, has asked $30,000 an acre for the park’s 16 to 18 usable acres.

Joe Perring, Daon’s general manager for land, confirmed that he has been talking with the county but declined to discuss the progress of the talks or confirm the price that Daon is asking.

The trailer park, including its sewage and water systems, will need extensive rebuilding if the county takes it over, Hernandez said, adding: “Essentially, there’s nothing but raw land out there.”

Perring said Daon delivered closure notices to the remaining residents over the weekend, leaving them, under state law, two more months before they must leave.

“They have two months, and we are going to use that two months to see if there’s a solution to this problem,” Perring said.

Daon offered to pay the residents as much as $1,500 each to leave the trailer park last year.

“We put together a relocation assistance program that paid varying amounts, depending upon when people moved,” Perring said. He refused to reveal the amount of aid the company actually provided.

“I just don’t think that kind of stuff is anybody’s business,” he declared.