Photos: Farmworker trailers

Aaron Gonzalez, 11, tosses a football with a friend on a thickly graveled road at St. Anthony’s Trailer Park in Mecca, Calif.

On a sweltering August evening, members of the Benitez family visit outside their trailers in Thermal, Calif.

Brenda Mora, 5, walks past an old electrical circuit box on a dry field next to her home at Don Jose Mobile Home Park in Thermal, Calif.

Dusty dirt roads surround the aging St. Anthony’s Trailer Park in Mecca, Calif.

Jorge Granados helps a resident fill a container at a water-filtration station at St. Anthony’s Trailer Park in Mecca, Calif. Despite the filtration, most residents won’t drink the water because they say it tastes like bleach.

The Benitez family, like other residents, have had electricity in their trailers only since earlier this year.

After a day in the fields, Macedonio Benitez practices counting numbers with his grandaughter Ily Miranda, 3, outside their trailer home in Thermal, Calif.

Schoolchildren arrive home at Don Jose Mobile Home Park in Thermal, Calif.

Armita Benitez chats with her niece Evelyn Hernandez, 12, outside her trailer in Thermal, Calif.

Maria Benitez and grandaughter Ily Miranda, 3, walk along the main street of their trailer park.

Antonio De La Rosa, who has owned a mobile home park in Thermal since the 1980s, is beginning the process of securing county permits to improve infrastructure around the property.

A resident of Vargas Mobile Home Park climbs a date tree to secure bags around the fruit.

Ily Miranda, 3 walks to her home in her family’s trailer park in Thermal, Calif. The dirt turns to pools of mud when it rains.

Sergio Carranza, executive director of the nonprofit housing group Pueblo Unido, hopes that this new water filtration system at Vargas Mobile Home Park in Thermal, Calif., will enable residents to skip having to buy bottled water.