Budget Crisis Takes Toll on Community for California Farmworkers

By JENNIFER MEDINA

THERMAL, Calif. — To understand the conditions at the Duroville mobile home park here, a half-hour drive from Palm Springs, Calif., just look at the windows. Dotting the walls are stretches of plywood, cardboard, blankets and even tin foil. Replacing the glass just costs too much for many of the residents to consider.

Duroville is a collection of more than 200 trailers that serve as homes for farmworkers who, at this time of year, work 12-hour days plucking grapes and digging up onions in triple-digit temperatures. There is no sewer: a patchwork of plastic pipes repaired with duct tape winds underground to a swampy pond. Cars kick up a load of dust on the dirt road, which quickly turns to mud when it rains. And this, it should be noted, is an improvement.

By now, residents were supposed to be getting ready to move out, to a new mobile home park that would seem luxurious by comparison. But that plan has suddenly been delayed by bureaucratic regulations that stem from California’s financial struggles.

A federal judge ruled in 2009 that conditions in Duroville were so bad that it had to be shut down. Reasoning that there would be a “humanitarian crisis” without a suitable alternative, the judge also ruled that replacement affordable housing had to be available for Duroville’s families, who now pay about $375 a month in rent and utilities.

Riverside County officials stepped in with a plan: they would use redevelopment funds to entice a new builder to create a mobile home development. They figured that the project would cost about $28 million in federal and state money and take about two years to built. Clearly, that was optimistic.

The first troubles arose in 2010, when officials assumed they could count on federal funds, which were later lost amid the debates over earmarks. The money eventually came through, paying for a sewer and water system on the new property.

But last year, Gov. Jerry Brown moved to shut down redevelopment agencies in the state, saying that the money often went to needless projects like downtown bars and would be better used to finance schools, particularly with the state facing a budget crisis.

John J. Benoit, a member of the county’s Board of Supervisors, bristles at that kind of attack. In the area he represents, which stretches to the eastern edge of California, redevelopment money is primarily used for housing — often for farmworkers who live in squalid conditions.

“You can’t possibly look at this and say that it’s not a good use of money,” Mr. Benoit said one recent morning as he led a tour of the area. “Everyone has to live somewhere,” adding that “people deserve basic services just like everyone else.”

The state will now only disperse money for existing contracts. Because Riverside did not approve a $12 million contract for the new homes until January, it will not get any of the funds, officials said last month.

The county says the state’s standard is absurd because the project has been in the works for more than three years and there was no way to begin building the homes until the infrastructure was completed last year.

Duroville gets its name from Harvey Duro Sr., the owner of the property and a member of Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Reservation. After Riverside County officials began cracking down on the unauthorized mobile home parks that dot the Coachella Valley in late 1990s, Mr. Duro made it known that people were welcome to set up homes on his property. Soon, there were more than 400 homes there, with as many as 6,000 residents. A dozen people can be found living in a two-bedroom trailer.

These days, many of the residents work in the service industry, shuttling back and forth to the resorts in Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage. Everyone agrees that conditions are better now that the court has taken over. Tom Flynn, the receiver whom the court set up to oversee the day-to-day operations in Duroville, helped to chase off the drug dealers who used the park as home base. Electric wires that looped around homes like spaghetti have been removed, cutting the risk of fires.

When one family leaves, no new residents are allowed to move in. The abandoned trailers are usually picked over for spare furniture, fixtures and sheet metal.

While he is proud of the changes, Mr. Flynn does not flinch when he describes the place: “It was built like a slum, and it’s still a slum. This is what you would expect in the third world, not in modern America.”

The vast majority of Duroville’s residents have roots in Mexico. Some are the children of immigrants who arrived to work on farms; others are more recent arrivals who move with each season’s crops. Nearly half are Purepehca, an indigenous tribe from the mountains of Michoachán State. Despite the conditions, some residents are reluctant to leave Duroville for fear of being separated from their extended families. But Mr. Flynn, local nuns, county officials and community organizers have worked to convince the families that moving to the new trailer park, called Mountain View Estates, will improve their lives.

The county had planned to use state money to essentially give new mobile homes to families, requiring them, in turn, to take responsibility for the property and pay $425 to rent the land on which the trailers stand. They look like prefabricated homes, but there are white shutters on the windows, and families can have their choice of a sprawling porch or a more private side entrance. Each is equipped with hookups for a washer and dryer and is protected by a wrought-iron fence. There is a community center and park with volleyball courts and soccer fields.

“There’s absolutely no way we would be able to do this without the public money,” said Bobby Melkesian, the developer who began converting part of his family’s farm to mobile home parks for farmworkers several years ago. “It’s only affordable housing because the government is helping make it that way. I just don’t have any other way of getting the money to do this.”

He looked down the street at the 40 homes that had been finished. The remaining 120 are on hold while county officials await final word from the state, which they hope will come in the next several weeks.

At a recent court hearing reviewing the status of the case, Judge David T. Bristow of Federal District Court, who did not issue the original ruling, said he was optimistic that the delay would simply be another bump in the road. “Is there anything in the history of the world that has been built on time?” he asked.

The dozens gathered in the courtroom, who have been involved in the case for five years, could only answer with nervous laughter.

Disasterpastor45

Sunday, May 27, 2012