Effort Begins to Find Homes for Squatters

In an unprecedented move, housing officials in affluent Carlsbad Monday began processing applications for low-income housing from families of the dozens of migrant workers being displaced from a squatters’ camp across the road from trendy La Costa.

The families, including three pregnant women and several young children, are the first members of the camp--specially targeted for destruction by authorities--whom local and federal agencies will attempt to relocate when the camp is leveled about Jan. 1.

Over the last decade, about 200 aliens have lived during the summer months in the primitive camp, in hovels constructed of scrap wood and A-frames made from plastic sheets and camouflaged with chaparral. Most of the workers return home for the winter.

Two open-air restaurants feed the population of migrants from Mexico, Central America and South America.

Prime Property

Called Valle Verde (Green Valley) by its inhabitants, the camp sits on a couple of hundred acres of prime coastal property on a ridgeline with a splendid view of the Pacific to the west and the hillside community of La Costa to the east. It has been on El Camino Real, near Olivenhain Road, for more than a decade.

Before development began to encroach, Valle Verde was one of many migrant worker camps spread across North County in isolated areas, close to the nurseries and agricultural fields where aliens were employed.

Today, however, the nurseries and tomato fields have all but disappeared, and aliens find themselves competing for dwindling jobs and living as unwanted neighbors next to new subdivisions of homes worth up to $1 million.

Valle Verde is one of several North County camps that have come under increased scrutiny by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the Border Patrol and the County Department of Health Services in the last three years.

Last week, health officials, reacting to mounting complaints from neighbors, declared the camp a health hazard and ordered it torn down by Jan. 1. County officials told the property owner, Carlsbad Partners, an investment group, to dismantle the camp and clear it. The owner presented a plan for the cleanup to the county, but, because the property is in the coastal zone, the plan also needs approval by the California Coastal Commission.

Steven Escoboza, assistant director of the Health Services Department, said a decision was made to find low-income housing for all of the displaced aliens, with families being placed first. Officials estimate that 12 families still live in the camp. Two families have already been placed in apartments by the Rev. Rafael Martinez, a Cuban-born Presbyterian minister familiar with the camps who works with the North County Chaplaincy.

Residents of Carlsbad

On Monday, Martinez drove seven families to the Carlsbad Housing and Redevelopment office and helped them apply for subsidized low-income housing. Housing Director Chris Salomone said it was the first time that his office has attempted to find low-income housing for migrant workers.

“We have some housing immediately available, but I don’t know if we can accommodate everybody now,” Salomone said. “We’re more than happy to help them because they are residents of Carlsbad, by virtue of their location.”

Salomone said the aliens have applied under federal housing programs that require them to pay 30% of their net income for housing, while the government subsidizes the rest. Another Carlsbad official said the office has stopped taking applications for low-income housing from local residents because the filing deadline has passed.

However, the official, who asked for anonymity, said that an exception was being made for the aliens because they were being displaced. She added that federal law prohibits housing officials from asking the applicants if they are in the country legally or illegally.

While at the housing office, Martinez and an assistant helped the families answer the questionnaires. “This is a good question. ‘Is this lady living in substandard housing now?’ ” Martinez said as he helped Lydia Cancino, 45, fill in the application.

Cancino has lived in Valle Verde four months with her daughter Rocio, 17, and sons Armando, 16, and Enoc, 4. Cancino, a widow, operates one of the camp’s two restaurants with her daughter. She entered the United States illegally after a flood wiped out her home and farm near Mexico City in 1986.

‘I Don’t Have Money’

“I didn’t want to do this because right now I don’t have money to pay rent if I do get a house,” Cancino said. “I hope that they’ll also help find a job so I can afford to pay the rent. . . . In addition to the rent, I also have to send money to my other three sons living in Mexico.”

Low-cost housing is almost non-existent in North County, and finding low-income housing may prove to be a major challenge, Martinez said. The minister, who has worked with migrant workers throughout North County for three years, asked people who can rent “a room, trailer, apartment or house” to a family to call him at the offices of the North County Chaplaincy at 436-0867 or at his home, 259-9063. All of the men and women who applied for housing complained of the cold and rain that has plagued the county over the last two weeks. All of the young children who accompanied their parents were suffering from colds.

“This is an answer to our prayers,” said Lorenzo Santos, from Oaxaca, Mexico. “I’m overjoyed at the possibility of living in a real house. My wife and I worry about our 5-year-old son getting pneumonia sleeping in our drafty home.”

Santos; his wife, Maria, and son, Jairo, live in a shack made of scrap plywood.