Trailer Residents Not Eager to Hit the Road

Six months after they were supposed to vacate a rundown roadside trailer court, more than a dozen families remain in the Corona Growers Trailer Park, paying their weekly rent and wondering where they will go when they are finally forced to leave.

Most are resigned to the fact that they eventually will be evicted. But after months of searching for another park that will accept them and their older trailers, they have all but given up.

“We have to move out of here, but we don’t know where,” said Roberto Hernandez, who works at a Christmas tree farm in south Corona.

Even Riverside County officials gave up the fight long ago, after trying first to find a place for the residents to relocate as a group, then to buy the trailer park and keep it open for low- and moderate-income families.

Some families have lived in the trailer park a decade or longer. Those who remain--about half of the 36 families living there last year--have seen an offer of relocation benefits slip away and are taking their chances, instead, in court.

“I tried to find another place,” Everado Cortez said, “but I can’t find any.”

In 1943, Corona Growers, a cooperative formed by citrus growers to set up a stable labor pool, opened its labor camp on the site, said Irma Castaneda, the park’s manager. The trailer park was opened in 1965 to house fieldworkers.

Now, citrus groves are giving way to housing tracts, and the growers don’t feel they need to provide housing for their shrinking work force.

Lease Canceled on Land

Two years ago, Corona Growers canceled its lease on the property. The camp’s old barracks were torn down, and the trailer park residents were told they, too, would have to go.

“There might be a place,” Roberto Hernandez said, “but I don’t earn that much money to pay the rent. . . . It would be better just to move somewhere around here and keep working at the tree farm. It would be hard to find another job.”

The park is owned by Corona Foothill Co., a subsidiary of BCE Development Inc. (formerly Daon Corp.) of Newport Beach. The company announced in February, 1985, that it would close the park a year thereafter.

“We gave them a year to vacate,” said Joe Perring, president of Corona Foothill. “It was our hope that at the end of the year, they’d be gone.”

Corona Foothill also offered financial incentives--as much as $1,500, depending on lot size and moving date--to families that moved before the February, 1986, deadline.

Although some residents complained that the payments were not enough to cover even the cost of moving their trailers, many took the offer, collecting a total of more than $10,000 in relocation assistance from the company, Perring said.

Returned to Mexico

Some of those who left found rental housing nearby in Corona or Riverside or El Cerrito, Hernandez said. Others returned to their native Mexico, he said, and some left without saying--perhaps not knowing--where they were going.

Some were able to sell their trailers; a few simply left their homes behind, to stand empty.

“We might sell the trailer, look for a house,” Hernandez said in Spanish, his 12-year-old son, Robert, translating. “I can’t find a place to take the trailer. They don’t want us there. They don’t tell us why.”

Hernandez saved to buy his family’s trailer, he said, because he thought they would be able to stay in the park forever. He pays $53 a week for rent, water and electricity.

Corona Foothill plans to clear the land, which is zoned by Riverside County for industrial use, then sell it, Perring said. Up to 18 acres, between Temescal Canyon Road and Temescal Wash, are suitable for development.

Industrial land in Corona is worth $4 to $6 a square foot, or more than $174,000 an acre, local real estate agents said. In the less-developed Temescal Valley, a few miles farther from Los Angeles and Orange County, the land probably would fetch maybe half that amount.

“I haven’t even tried to market it yet,” Perring said. “I can’t sell it until this labor camp issue is settled.”

Two lawsuits related to the park’s closing have been making their way through Riverside County courts.

Jury Trial Scheduled

Eviction proceedings, brought by Corona Foothill, are scheduled for a jury trial next month in Corona Municipal Court. There, an attorney for the families will argue that the owner has failed to meet state requirements for closing a mobile home park.

Under a 1980 state law, a park owner must complete a study analyzing the impact on residents who are displaced by a park’s closure or conversion, said the residents’ attorney, Steven L. Robinson of Inland Counties Legal Services.

“They have not done that,” Robinson said. “It obviously, from the wording of the statute, has to be done before the park is closed. . . . The report is supposed to identify alternatives for housing sites.”

Corona Foothill maintains that its property is a labor camp rather than a mobile home park, and is not subject to the requirement, said Stephen C. Drummy, attorney for the company.

The residents pay rent for their trailer spaces, however, and not all of them work in Foothill’s fields and groves, Robinson said. “I think we will prevail.”

A victory in the eviction case probably would only delay the residents’ forced departure.

Another lawsuit asked “for monetary damages and for an injunction prohibiting them from evicting our residents,” Robinson said. That suit alleged that the park has been maintained in substandard condition, that residents have been threatened with having their utilities cut off and that the managers have violated the tenants’ rights. The amount of damages is not specified.

Two Targets of Suit

The lawsuit was filed against both Corona Foothill and Corona Growers, the cooperative that continues to manage the park for the company. Corona Foothill’s attorneys are handling the case for both organizations.

The residents’ cause suffered a setback when a Riverside County Superior Court judge ruled “that the residents had not stated proper claims . . . upon which any (damages) can be based,” Drummy said.

But the judge gave the residents time to file a revised complaint, which they expect to do in November, Robinson said.

“We’d be more than happy to settle it,” Robinson said. “. . . We’re not saying that we don’t want to move. We’re saying that arrangements have to be made and we need some help.”