End of the Trail? : Families Are Ordered Off Land at Ramshackle Border Settlement That Sprouted on Otay Mesa

About 100 families believed they had found perfection when they bought lots on Dillons Trail--high on a hill with a distant view of the Pacific, far from noisy freeways and nosy next-door neighbors.

But they were wrong.

The City of San Diego has served eviction notices to the people living on those lots, ordering them off the land by May 1. The rolling Otay Mesa site is dotted with trailers, mobile homes, shanties, a few two-story houses and even a boat or two, which have been rented to mostly low-income families for less than $200 a month. The settlement that has developed haphazardly on the 90-acre tract east of San Ysidro is similar to some of the colonias that have sprouted across the border in fast-growing Tijuana--without water, sewers, power, telephones or garbage pickup.

Clusters of trailers and mobile homes stand on the high points of the mesa, surrounded by fenced compounds and guarded by growling dogs and locked gates. A few homes stand alone on near-acre lots, also protected by walls and barbed wire. At the mesa’s edges and down the canyons is evidence of civilization in the form of garbage heaps festooned with charred cans and broken glass. Occasionally, a lone figure is seen walking across one of the compounds and disappearing into one of the dilapidated dwellings.

Frank Hafner, San Diego city zoning code enforcement officer, said that the residents along Dillons Trail are breaking about every building, zoning and health code in the books. But, he said, there is an effort afoot to try to help the residents conform to minimum requirements and to continue to exist in the once-private community now being invaded by city and county officials, the news media and neighboring landowners urging them to clean up their act.

Hafner pointed out that residents of Dillons Trail aren’t “squatters” who acquired claim to their land by moving onto it and staying there. Most, he said, “have purchased a lot legally and put some kind of a dwelling on it.” Most of the buildings and trailers, however, could never meet city housing or building codes, and few owners bothered to obtain permits to erect the structures or to move in their trailers and buildings.

Dillons Trail residents have been there for more than a year, probably for several years, unnoticed and unbothered by officialdom, according to Michael Devine, acting chief of the county’s environmental health services division. Their troubles started when some of the settlement’s youngsters attending nearby San Ysidro schools were found to have head and body lice, “probably because of the lack of water out there that made bathing difficult, to say the least,” Devine said.

Makeshift toilets, similar to the deep-ditch outhouses of earlier times, have prompted complaints from other property owners that sewage is seeping out onto their land.

“Actually, there are only about five or six places, trailers mainly, that probably never could be brought up to minimum code,” Devine said. With cooperative effort and money, the rest could probably win grudging approval from city and county authorities.

The lack of water and sewer lines to the area is the chief hurdle that property owners face, Hafner said, because soil conditions apparently aren’t suitable for installation of leech lines and septic tanks. He said that one city official estimated that it would cost $1.8 million to bring in power, water and sewer lines to the area--”which adds up to about $20,000 a property.”

“I don’t have that much money, and I don’t think anybody else does either,” said Antonio Blas, owner of one of the 95 lots in the border community.

Boat High and Dry

Renter Normal Shoults, 72, lives in his boat, dry-docked on oil drums, and pays $75 a month rent to the landowner. He resents the intrusion of officialdom on the quiet mesa. “They’re calling me a criminal and I suppose I am, but I’m not hurting anyone,” Shoults said.

There are a few homes with running water and flushing toilets served from water tanks, and some units have electricity provided by generators, Devine said. But most of the homes on Dillons Trail are as primitive as those of early California homesteaders. John Moline, who rents a trailer for his family, admits that yes, “we’re living out here like homesteaders. I like it here. It’s peaceful.”

Devine said that initially the area was a weekend wilderness retreat for families who parked trailers and used chemical toilets during their once-in-a-while outings. Slowly, the recreational use turned to rental use and now 50 to 60 residents live permanently on Dillons Trail, he estimated.

Hafner said that the area “looks like a menagerie” and is going to take work and planning to bring it up to habitable standards. He is optimistic, however, that the Dillons Trail landowners may cooperate in the effort, ousting renters and improving their properties.

At a property owners’ meeting at nearby Brown Field called by city building and zoning enforcement staffers last Saturday, Hafner counted 75 to 80 in the audience, “which isn’t a bad sign of interest at all.” However, when the sign-up sheet that had been circulated through the audience was retrieved at the end of the session, only blank pages were left. Someone had taken the list of attendees.

Another Meeting Planned

He said that another property owners’ meeting is planned for April 18, when city officials will outline possible avenues for property owners who want to bring their property into conformance with city codes--ways less expensive than the $1.8-million estimate to bring in urban-level services to the primitive community.

For the renters who will be ousted until improvements are made, Hafner had few solutions, “except for those who are on the city housing lists. Those, we can move to the top of the list on the basis of hardship. About the others, I don’t know.”

The “worst case scenario” would occur if the current residents of Dillons Trail flatly refuse to leave by the May 1 deadline, Hafner said.

“If that happened, I suppose we would have to go to court and obtain an injunction,” he said. “If they violated the court order, they would be in contempt of court.”

However, Hafner admits, “I feel sort of responsible for them. No, that’s not the right word. But I think we can help them work things out. I think they deserve a little help and we plan to help them.”