‘It’s Like We’re in Jail’ : Locked Access Gate Traps Shantytown’s 40 Tenants

A standoff at high noon on a rambling canyon ranch with a history as long as any Western tale left Aaron Salgado wondering Friday what would become of his family.

“I don’t know what to do,” said Salgado, standing behind a locked metal gate literally separating his home from the outside world. “It’s like we’re in jail, but we’re not in jail.”

A longstanding territorial feud between rancher Sam Porter and his neighbors stranded Salgado and about 40 other tenants of a shantytown on the property.

The latest action in the saga of the settlement known as Porterville came Friday when the Trabuco Highlands Community Assn., backed by a court order, locked a newly installed gate that blocks the shantytown from the subdivision of homes.

Don Chadd, a spokesman for the association, called the situation unfortunate but unavoidable, and one that’s causing homeowners anguish.

Another roadway onto the ranch through two neighboring nurseries off Trabuco Canyon Road remained blocked because of an easement dispute with Porter, leaving tenants with no way onto the ranch except by walking at least a mile along a rugged, dry creek bed.

Tenants, trapped in the middle of the dispute, pleaded for more time to raise money for moving. They wondered how their children would get to and from school, and how two pregnant women would receive medical care.

“All we want is to live here in peace,” said Eusebio Salgado, an 18-year-old who lives in predominantly Latino Porterville. “We can’t afford to go anywhere else. We make very little money.”

A handful of people from nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church and School in Rancho Santa Margarita arrived at the gate to help the families find new homes.

“This breaks my heart,” said Fernando Pedraza, a school employee. “We want to do whatever we can to help.”

Porterville, which sits next to the Cleveland National Forest, has survived floods, windstorms, the Great Indian Trail fire of 1980 and long periods of drought. But this latest action is “the end of it,” Porter said.

Porter said the only way he can help his tenants, who pay an average of $50 per person per month in rent, is to give them two-week eviction notices. He said he informed them more than a week ago about the impending gate closure and doesn’t want them risking their lives on the creek trail when the rains start.

“Essentially, you have an island of 233 acres without any legitimate access,” he said. “Obviously, I’m not content with what’s going on here.”

Porter has said his namesake settlement was established because “it is my Christian, charitable obligation to provide people who work for a living a place to live.”

But others have accused him of exploiting his tenants for rent, while allowing them to live in what some say are deplorable conditions in the ramshackle community of travel trailers and homemade cabins. The settlement has communal toilets and showers, but no electricity. The county has tried to dismantle the camp several times in the last decade, citing numerous fire, safety and health code violations.

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A court agreement reached between Porter and the William Lyon Co. in July, 1992, gives the association the right to build a gate blocking the 645-home subdivision from the ranch, Chadd said. Porter and his immediate family have a key to the gate and are the only ones allowed in. The Orange County Fire Department also has access in case of an emergency, Chadd said.

Shadow Rock Lane, the street that ends at the ranch, is not built to handle the excess traffic generated from the ranch, and residents have complained about speeding cars, noise and people passing into the encampment at all hours of the day and night, Chadd said.

“We have to respond to our constituency,” he said.

Chadd said the association has given Porter and the tenants plenty of notice about the gate, which was completed last week. They were also given advance warning that a security firm allowing people through the gate all week would be leaving at noon Friday, meaning the gate would be closed for good.

Some tenants did make a getaway minutes before the gate closed.

But as the saga of the people of Porterville played out, some of the neighbors in Trabuco Highlands said they felt the tenants were the victims of discrimination.

“It kind of makes me mad,” said homeowner Rhonda Kyrias, as she delivered a child of one of the migrant families--her son’s schoolmate--at the gate Thursday evening. “These people are trying to make a living, and they’re not being allowed to come and go as they please. This is America. You can’t lock people in like this.”

But others, like Stella Esmilla Lawson, who lives right across the street from the gate, said it was not a question of discrimination but of safety.

“This has been construed as a racist thing, but it is not,” she said. “I say it is good that they’re closing the gate permanently because of the traffic issue. This road wasn’t designed for so many cars. There are about 100 homes along this block and that’s a lot of cars. It’s a matter of safety, not discrimination.”

Henry Sakaida, manager of Sakaida Nursery next to the ranch, said he, too, feels bad about the situation, but believes Porterville poses serious fire, health and safety problems that should have been resolved by the county years ago.

“Basically, Porter runs a slum encampment,” Sakaida said. “He’s trying to make this into a racial issue. But basically, what it is to us is a safety, security and health issue.”