Rousted Occupants Say Hard Work Keeps Doors Open

It was the home of the cook at the Newbury Park taco stand, the Westlake factory worker, the local carpenter.

Just two blocks from Thousand Oaks Boulevard, the makeshift village of Latino immigrant families that sheriff’s deputies and city code inspectors pounced on Thursday had housed some of this city’s poorest laborers for years.

And many of the 50 or so men, women and children who were rousted from their metal toolsheds, huts and self-built rooms in the predawn morning said they had nowhere else to go.

But several made one thing clear: There was work to be had in Thousand Oaks and Ventura County--which is the reason they came here, often illegally, from places like Mexico and Guatemala--and they would remain in the area.

“We may be undocumented, but they like our work--that’s why we’re here,” said Eucario Romero, a 36-year-old Mexican immigrant who said he entered the country illegally. “As long as we continue to work hard, the doors will continue to open for us. I have many friends in Thousand Oaks. God will take care of us.”

Romero, a construction worker, and his wife, Dominga, a cook at a Mexican restaurant, rented a tiny, wooden shack with another man from landlords Joy and Al Silver of Westlake Village for $300 a month.

Two of their children, Dalia, 2, and Mario, 4 months, were born in that shack. The family slept on the floor in a bundle of tattered sheets, fending off huge rats that entered their home in the night.

Still, they had a bathroom and a makeshift kitchen, more than the metal storage sheds some of their neighbors lived in but lacking the amenities of the four small houses on the property.

Like countless others, they were drawn to Thousand Oaks by its low crime rate and ample parkland.

“I don’t know where we’re going to go, but it’s easy to find another place like this,” Romero said in Spanish, clutching $300 in crisp $50 and $100 bills that Joy Silver had just given him as reimbursement. “I know of a few right now.”

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Neighbors said the overcrowding and substandard living conditions at the southwest corner of Sunset and Royal Oaks drives were nothing new to them. Some complained of inebriated men urinating in public and toddlers running unchecked in the streets, but neighbors generally seemed divided over the property and its numerous inhabitants.

“A lot of them were always drunk in the street,” said a resident of the adjacent Groves condominiums, who declined to give her name. “When I came home from work, I had to dodge them.”

“They’ve got to live somewhere,” said Roy Cooper, who owns a house on Sunset Drive. “The only thing that bothered me was people tooting their horns in the morning to pick up workers. They never caused me any trouble.”

Alejandra Pena, 36, came to Thousand Oaks illegally three months ago from the same Mexican town as Romero--Tulimar in the province of Guerrero. She joined her husband, who was living in Los Angeles, and came to Thousand Oaks, where they and another couple rented a shack from the Silvers for $400 a month.

“The town we came from was very poor,” Pena said, watching a soap opera on Spanish-language television while baby-sitting the Romeros’ children. “We came here for a better life. In our town, we could not afford to pay for eggs and beans.

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“My husband cannot read, and he doesn’t know any English,” she added. “But we are doing much better here.”

Pena was reimbursed $400 by Joy Silver. She and her husband, Felipe, as well as the shack’s other inhabitants, had to be out by 5 p.m., like many others.

They had no car and planned to take their small television set, microwave oven and clothes but leave their other possessions behind. They didn’t know where they were going but were thinking of heading to Community House, a homeless assistance center that was offering the shantytown’s ousted dwellers a place to stay for the night.

The once-overcrowded lot looked eerily empty Thursday afternoon, as most of those who had been living there had already left or were planning to leave. A Moorpark man pulled up in a pickup truck and began loading some friends’ belongings as a van pulled away.

But the thin, metal toolsheds and tiny storage rooms remained behind, clumsily rigged with orange electrical wiring, lined with foam mattresses, milk crates and pictures of Jesus. The stench of urine hovered.

“I am not going to lie, I’m here illegally,” Romero said, pointing out the leaky sink and bullet holes in the walls of his shack, remnants of a previous occupant. “But where am I going to go? I need money for my children. I have two other kids in Mexico with my sister. I call them at least once a month and I send them $200.

“It just seems the poor people always get put down,” he added. “The poor are on the ground, and that’s where some people want to keep us. I have no choice but to do this. I have to live here.”

Bustillo is a staff writer and Arevalo is a correspondent.