City Moves to Clean Up Blighted Trailer Park

For decades, the Sundown Trailer Park has been a home to the disenfranchised.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Japanese Americans settled there after being released from the World War II internment camps. In more recent years, the poor, many of them immigrants from Mexico, moved here for cheap housing.

But change seems imminent.

Los Angeles city officials said health and safety violations that have accumulated over the years at the dilapidated trailer park in Sun Valley will finally be fixed. And a new owner could replace the trailer park with an industrial building.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council ordered residents to pay rent into an escrow account, not to the landlord, to fund overdue repairs. It is the first time a trailer park has been listed with the city’s Rent Escrow Account Program, said Shahry Deyhimy, who oversees the program.

Trailer parks are regulated by the state, and Sundown has been cited for 110 violations, including hazardous electrical wiring and equipment, inoperable firefighting equipment, trash and debris, and roaming dogs, chickens and roosters.

Councilman Alex Padilla said conditions there “would churn your stomach.” Broken pipes and backed-up sewers were common.

“The new owner and the old owner have been giving mixed signals about what they want to do with the property,” Padilla said.

In the meantime, the families need to consider relocating, Padilla said.

Debra Korduner, attorney for the new owner, George Lanning, said she and Lanning were disappointed with the council’s action. As the new landlord, Lanning wants to ensure the park’s conditions are habitable, but he is limited in interfering with some of the modifications tenants have made, Korduner said.

The former owners, Jill and Darwin Campbell, said that all violations the owners could have fixed, have been fixed.

“We probably could have done more, but we would have had to raise their rent,” said Jill Campbell. “They pay $343 a month.”

Ted Clark has lived at Sundown for 30 years. Now in his 80s, he said there have been some problems, but he considers it home.

“I feel some of the complaints aren’t valid,” Clark said, sneaking a bit of shade under a scrawny tree. “$340 is standard rent here. Where can you find a place that low?”

For Maria Jauregui, 45, who has lived at the trailer park nearly eight years, the thought of moving makes her sad. The park has been home to her husband and her children.

But she realizes the makeshift addition to her trailer is illegal.

“I’m worried what will happen after all this,” she said. “We can’t just fit in this trailer.”