Home Sour Home : Oxnard to Consider Demolishing Dilapidated Farm Worker Trailer Park

The old tin trailers are baking in a late-afternoon sun that defeats the ocean breeze.

Around this time of day, when farm workers return from the fields and the metal shells they live in turn into ovens, residents of the Oxnard Mobilehome Lodge seek relief under crude plywood porches tacked onto their run-down coaches.

But they also seek some measure of escape.

Escape from aging and broken trailers shared by two and three families who couldn’t pay the rent alone. Escape from a place where poor laborers fill every nook, converting kitchens and toolsheds into places to sleep.

In the shadow of a drive-in theater, this 140-unit trailer camp is crammed onto five acres behind a Commercial Avenue industrial strip. Farm workers first planted trailers side-by-side on this land more than half a century ago and have watched Oxnard grow up around them.

At the same time, they have seen their own slice of the city go from bad to worse.

This is a place where gas leaks and power outages and water shortages are common. A place where cars bump along narrow streets near kids who take to the asphalt because they have nowhere else to play.

With nearly 1,100 residents and an average of 28 trailers an acre, the park is one of Ventura County’s densest enclaves and is considered to be among its most dangerous.

“This is by far the worst slum in Ventura County,” said Marco Antonio Abarca, an attorney with the legal advocacy group California Rural Legal Assistance. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

Responding to the problems, city staff members have drafted a plan that would demolish the camp and move residents to a new, 150-unit park on 21 unincorporated acres near Olds Road.

The plan, which the City Council is to consider Tuesday, calls for park residents to form a nonprofit corporation to develop the site and buy their own double-wide, three-bedroom coaches. The city could pave the way for development by starting annexation proceedings and ordering staff to figure out how to buy the farmland.

The estimated price tag for the new park is $11 million. City staff have recommended that the combination of a state rental-housing construction loan, low-income tax credits and a tax-free municipal bond issue be used to finance construction.

At least one councilman said that is a price that the city should be willing to pay.

“If the proposal is supported by park residents, I would say it has a fairly good chance of succeeding,” Councilman Manuel Lopez said. “I think it would be difficult for the rest of the council to turn it down.”

Oxnard Housing Director Sal Gonzalez said his staff has spent more than a year working on the proposal, and he too hopes that the council will embrace it.

“I think there is a tremendous need for this project,” said Gonzalez, noting that if all goes smoothly the new park will take about three years to build. “The fire danger is still high, and the potential for problems hasn’t gone away.”

Members of this cramped community say they have heard it all before.

They have become fearful as state inspections over the years have uncovered hundreds of potentially disastrous fire, health and safety code violations. They have waited patiently as city officials commissioned one study after another to determine the fate of the park, which is home to owners and renters.

And they have grown angry as city leaders channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars into ambitious development ventures, but little toward fixing their park.

Now, they say, it is time for action.

“We have rights as citizens of this country to live in a place where you don’t have to worry about your health and safety,” said Luis Teran, a disabled celery picker who heads the park’s tenant association.

Teran considers himself lucky. He and his wife share a canary-yellow one-bedroom trailer. The kitchen is about six feet high and contains a pint-sized sink and stove. The bathroom is so small, you have to squeeze in sideways.

Teran’s daughter, Maria, lives next door with her husband and son. The floor of their one-bedroom trailer is rotted and caving in, and a hole in the ceiling is covered by a small umbrella.

“These are the people who put food on our tables, some of the hardest workers in the country,” said Teran, who has occupied Space 84 for 14 years. “They deserve better than this.”

Repairs have been ordered and completed at the park over the years, said Paul Kranhold, a spokesman for the state Department of Housing and Community Development, the agency responsible for code enforcement at trailer parks.

“The problem with these older parks is the repairs don’t last long,” said Kranhold, who noted that inspection reports on the Mobilehome Lodge are as thick as telephone books. “Sometimes it’s best just to start over.”

Fires destroyed three trailers in 1985 and a metal shed used as a bedroom in 1987. Subsequent inspections have found electrical boxes with exposed wiring and rotted power lines.

Kranhold said the last inspection of the park, in December, found 1,197 violations, of which more than half were blamed on the park owner, Richard Walbergh. Reinspection in February found that 687 of those violations had not been fixed, 510 of them the responsibility of the owner.

None of the violations was life-threatening, Kranhold said.

Walbergh could not be reached for comment. The park manager, Derrick & Associates of Oxnard, referred all inquiries about the Mobilehome Lodge to attorney Manuel Covarrubias, who did not return phone calls.

“A place like this really doesn’t get better unless there is a major influx of capital,” Kranhold said. “City politics has played a big part. Every two or three years this becomes a visible issue with talk of moving it or closing it, then it goes away.”

Abarca, the CRLA attorney, said he is counting on election-year pressure to generate support for the new park.

“It’s not a question of money, it’s a question of desire,” he said. “The money will come if they want to do it. All we are asking is for city officials to put their political capital behind what they say needs to be done.”

Dozens of laborers plan to attend Tuesday’s council meeting to press their case for the new park. They have been meeting for months to prepare.

“We are going to ask the city to help us,” said Teran, touring the narrow streets of the rundown park as children pushed a bicycle wheel around for fun. “We are going to tell them that we are in a lot of danger.”

The park itself appears trapped in some earlier time. The hand-painted coaches--tiny travel trailers never meant to be permanent housing--display the old black-and-gold California license plates. A tangled web of power lines crisscross overhead and once in a while shower the park with sparks.

V-shaped television antennas, resembling a flock of aluminum birds, poke out from rooftops that are rusted and peeling.

“It’s a hard life here,” said Reynaldo Martinez, a 44-year-old strawberry picker who shares a two-bedroom trailer with nine others, including four children. “The conditions are bad, but we can’t afford to go anyplace else.”

In a nearby trailer, where the sun boosted the indoor temperature to above 100 degrees, Elsa Hernandez fixed a simple meal of Spanish rice and green chiles. A fan pushed hot air through the only real bedroom in the unit, where her newborn daughter lay sleeping and sweating.

Nine people live in this 40-year-old trailer. One sleeps on a couch outside.

“There are too many of us here,” said Hernandez, 21, wiping away the sweat sliding down her face. “Now that I’m a mother, I think it’s time to get out.”