UC Irvine’s Funkiest Student Housing Is Going, Going, Gone
Less than two hours after auctioneer Sean Fraley started taking bids for about 25 student-owned mobile homes Saturday, a quirky neighborhood on the fringe of the UC Irvine campus was no more.
For some of the students who have lived in the collection of mostly old, rickety trailers at Irvine Meadows West, it was hard to watch their cozy community come to such an impersonal end.
“What can I say? We saw the devil today,” said Brian Crawford, a graduate student.
UCI administrators say they need the property for a parking lot, a part of the university’s master plan.
The travel trailers and double-wide mobile homes were nestled in a shady corner of the campus near Bison Avenue and East Peltason Drive for more than 20 years, offering an affordable and funky alternative to dormitory or off-campus living.
“People are friendly here. Neighborly. We share things,” said Lynn Hartzler, a graduate student. “It was fantastic. I lived here for $8 a day.”
Bruce Hemmer, who owns a 1951 Spartan travel trailer with a one-room attachment, paid the university just $130 a month for the rent and utilities.
“Compared to living off campus, it was a deal,” he said. He has a rose garden in the back and “I had this place to myself. Plus it has so much class.”
Hemmer did not put his home in the auction and hopes to sell it for $3,000.
Other students, who didn’t have plans to move to another mobile home park, agreed to sell their trailers in an auction.
The buyers of the homes have until July 31 to remove their property, as do the students still living there.
The mobile home residents clung tenaciously to their settlement for years, forming a group called Outside the Master Plan, selling T-shirts that said “Don’t Pave Paradise to Put Up a Parking Lot,” and had successfully stalled the removal of the homes in 1999.
The price for another five years, however, was the acknowledgment by residents that they would have to leave in 2004.
Residents milled around the park Saturday, watching as bidders inspected the homes before Fraley began his rapid-fire auction patter.
A double-wide went for $900, a 1969 Aljo trailer sold for $225, a 1982 Road Ranger went for $300, and Wes and Jeanette Thoroughman of Irvine bought two metal sheds for $10.
Raul Castro of Whittier bought five trailers, two on Friday and three on Saturday. He says he owns about 15 acres in Twentynine Palms and plans to rent them to friends and acquaintances when they come out to ride all-terrain vehicles.
Occasionally, the bidding got spirited. Bidding for a 1973 Pioneer trailer started at $200 and climbed to $650.
But mainly, the broken-down homes went cheaply, if at all.
“No interest? No interest?” Fraley barked into his microphone. “Let’s move on.”
