OXNARD : Panel Criticized in Trailer Park Dispute

Without offering its own solution, the Oxnard City Council has lashed out at a committee composed of farm worker representatives and the owner of a slum-like mobile home park for failing to come up with a plan to improve living conditions for the park’s 1,100 residents.

The council has rejected the recommendation of the committee to relocate the residents of the Oxnard Mobilehome Lodge to a proposed city-subsidized housing project, saying it is financially infeasible.

During a hearing on the issue Tuesday, Councilman Andres Herrera said that city officials could have come up with the same proposal on their own. He said he was upset at what he considered to be a lack of ingenuity shown by the committee members.

Herrera especially ripped into Ramsey Gregory, a representative of the Rural Community Assistance Corp. and a member of the committee. Gregory, who was not present during Tuesday’s hearing, has been highly critical of the city, even going so far as to accuse Oxnard of misusing federal funds for the proposed housing project.

Herrera said that Gregory, whose organization provides housing for farm workers, misled the council by claiming to have sources of funding to help refurbish trailers at the mobile home park.

“He’s turned out to be close to a jackass because he hasn’t accomplished anything,” Herrera said. “I feel like I have been betrayed.”

Karen Guriel, the owner of the trailer park and a member of the committee, asked the city to buy the park from her, but that proposal has also been rejected. Guriel said she sees no other options to improve living conditions at the trailer park.

“If the city will not buy the park, then someone else will,” she said. “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.”

The city purchased 41 acres of farmland in east Oxnard last year from real estate speculator Donald T. Kojima for $5.32 million. The deal was originally conceived to relocate the trailer park residents.

But council members later backed off that pledge, saying it was financially infeasible. And the housing being proposed would be too expensive for the residents--mostly poor farm workers.