Trailer Park Tenants Evicted

After four electrical accidents--two of them fatal--at desert trailer parks, Riverside County is barraging tenants with eviction notices as part of a safety crackdown.

County officials insist that they really do not want to empty the trailer parks and are threatening evictions mainly to force landlords into making improvements. Yet, the result has been anxiety among the farm workers who say they cannot afford to live anyplace else amid the Coachella Valley’s fields of carrots, cauliflower and lettuce.

“I am scared. My family has no place to go,” said Javier Gallardo, who owns the modest trailer he shares with his wife and seven children. Gallardo pays $200 a month to park the trailer on a dusty Thermal plot.

“We have very little, but we have our trailer. We eat good and are happy. Why is the county taking this away?”

So far, the county has served eviction notices to the Gallardos and about 200 other families at 20 parks. Officials expect the campaign to eventually target 80 more parks, possibly affecting 1,200 families in all.

No one has been forced to move or had their utilities disconnected yet. And trailer tenants from various parks recently met to present a united front of protest to the county.

However, some panicked families have pulled their trailers to parks where conditions are just as bad, but which have not yet received the notices, or to the nearby Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation. The rest are worried.

The situation has spotlighted the lack of affordable, decent housing in the desert farm belt.

A flier accompanying the eviction notice gave the phone number for Riverside County’s Housing Authority, which has a three- to seven-year waiting list for assistance.

After families turned to Catholic Charities for help, the bishop of the San Bernardino diocese, Gerald Barnes, criticized the county’s actions.

“All of us should be concerned about the living conditions [in the parks], but it is senseless and even cruel to evict them from their trailers and throw them out into the desert. Even a leaky roof is better than no roof at all,” he said. “These people are forgotten and voiceless and our diocese is concerned they be treated with justice and compassion.”

Joe Tronti, the county’s supervising code enforcement officer, said he had no choice but to send out the eviction notices.

“I don’t want anyone else to die. Closing the parks is not my goal. We want the owner to make the places safe,” he said.

In June, a 41-year-old man was killed when he was washing his trailer in a Thermal park and grabbed a carport pole that touched exposed wires. The same month, a 16-year-old boy was electrocuted at a Mecca park where trailers were rigged up to a house for electricity.

Although not fatal, other recent incidents alarmed authorities. A 4-year-old Thermal girl was knocked unconscious in May when she stepped out of a wading pool and grabbed the side of her family’s trailer, which wasn’t grounded properly. A county fireman suffered a minor shock in June when he touched the outside of an ungrounded trailer.

Park owners, many of them former farm workers, say the county’s labyrinth of requirements and building fees makes it impossible to bring their parks up to code.

Jose Perez, owner of a Thermal trailer park hidden behind a date grove, said he at first tried hard to satisfy the county but then gave up.

“I kept fixing thing after thing after thing. But the county would say I couldn’t get a permit for one thing until I had a permit for another,” said Perez, sitting on the porch of his own double-wide trailer. A former migrant farm worker, he flipped through numerous safety violation reports dating back to 1991, including some involving electrical grounding.

“The county wants the park owners to be like the bad guys in the movies. But you can ask the people who live here. They are like my family. They will tell you I tried,” he said.

Arturo Rodriguez, an Indio attorney representing 15 of the trailer park owners over the last year, said the county has refused to work with his clients. “It’s been a major case of getting the runaround.”

Rodriquez noted that many of the parks are near an area south of Thermal’s airport that has been approved by the county for airport expansion, housing, schools and a 36-hole golf course. That is the real reason for the evictions, he said.

Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson said there is no connection between the notices and any plans for development.

“The reason the county is cracking down is we would be liable if we didn’t,” he said. “We’re trying to get slum landlords to upgrade the parks.”

Adella Bautista believes her park is fine the way it is.

“I like living here,” Bautista said, pointing out the stonework, flower bushes and fence that she and her husband put in since they moved to the Thermal park three years ago. “Then one day they just knock on the door and tell us we’re evicted. Can you imagine being told you have a month to move?”

The deadline on Bautista’s eviction notice was Nov. 3, but the county did not turn off the lights and Bautista and her neighbors have not moved.

“Where am I going to go?” Bautista asked. “Even if there were apartments nearby, I would need a down payment, which I don’t have.”

Bautista owns her trailer and pays $240 a month for land rent and utilities, such as running her two air conditioners during the summer. Community workers and tenants consider this park where trailers are evenly lined up along a well-groomed road as one of the nicest in the area. But county officials say park owner Ben Hernandez does not have proper permits.

A mile away, Elena Carillo says little to defend the park where she lives. When it rains, raw sewage gathers in puddles. The wind blows sand through window cracks. Because the trailer has no water heater, she must heat water on the stove for baths. Her three children walk a mile down a long, narrow road used by big rigs to catch the school bus.

“If I could I’d live in one of those--what do you call it? country clubs,” she said.

But this ancient one-bedroom tailer is her family’s only real possession. Carillo paid $1,000 for it three years ago. She pays $150 a month to park it, including utilities. She has painted all the cupboards and the stove and refrigerator pink. The living room where she and her husband sleep is filled with teddy bears and artificial ficus trees.

Carillo said she does not believe that the county is interested in her safety. “These trailer parks have been here for years and no one’s ever cared before.” she said.

Jeanette Arnquist, a Catholic Charities official who adamantly opposes the evictions, said the fatalities are heartbreaking. “But I don’t think evictions are a very good answer,” she said. “Where will all these people go?”