Plan to Replace Trailer Park Advances

After nearly a decade of discussion, Oxnard City Council on Tuesday moved a step closer to building alternative housing for 1,100 residents living in a decrepit trailer park.

About two dozen residents of Oxnard Mobilehome Lodge, toting signs reading “Please Listen to Us” and “Please Take Us to the Promised Land,” appealed to the council to let them into the decision-making process.

The council approved the soliciting of bids to build more than 100 homes--ranging in price from $80,000 to $100,000--on a parcel off Camino del Sol near the Ventura Freeway.

Last year, the city paid real estate speculator Donald T. Kojima $5.32 million for the east Oxnard farmland plot of 41 acres as a relocation site.

Kojima has proposed installing 1,150-square-foot manufactured homes, which would sell for about $90,000. Farm worker advocates contend the mobile home residents couldn’t afford this price tag.

“I feel we need to be included, and that needs to be part of the record,” said Eileen McCarthy, staff attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, which represents the residents. “The Oxnard Mobile Home residents should have a role in the type of housing that’s built.”

The average resident makes no more than $15,000 annually, she said, and any ability to afford the homes would depend on the availability of subsidies and loans.

The city first considered relocating the Oxnard Mobilehome Lodge’s residents in 1985, when a fire scorched three trailers and left two dozen people homeless. In 1991, a state inspector discovered 1,197 health and safety violations in Oxnard Mobilehome Lodge, branded by some as the worst slum in Ventura County.