Judge rules residents may stay in mobile home park
—By Lori Craig
A group of USC Law students who fought to keep a Southern California mobile home park open won their battle recently when a judge ruled that park’s residents may say in their homes.
More than two dozen USC Law students visited the Desert Mobile Home Park in the Coachella Valley last December and worked to help residents keep their homes. The development’s 270 mobile homes serve as low-cost housing for more than 2,000 full-time residents, more than 90 percent of whom are farm workers, and about twice as many seasonal migrant workers.
“Winning this case means so much to the residents,” said Jessica Hewins ’10, who traveled to the area with USC Legal Aid Alternative Breaks. “From the surveys we helped with, it was evident that many of the residents don’t have alternatives, as far as low-income housing goes. They would likely have been forced to relocate, risking their jobs and disrupting their children’s education by moving schools mid-year.”
The development is rife with health and safety problems and the federal government was attempting to permanently close the park, forcing its residents to move out of the dilapidated trailers and unpaved streets. The USC Law students worked with California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) to identify the effects closure of the park would likely have on the thousands who would be left homeless.
In May, Judge Stephen G. Larson ’89 decreed that the mobile home park would stay open until alternative housing was available. In his decision, Judge Larson said closing the development would “create a major humanitarian crisis” and “one of the largest forced human migrations in the history of this State.”
Hewins said that, while the park is in disrepair, its residents have few housing alternatives and many enjoy a sense of community in Duroville. It is home to a large group of Purépecha, an indigenous people from Michoacan, Mexico, some of whom speak their native language, very little Spanish, and close to zero English.
“Although from the outsider's perspective, the community might look like a rundown mobile home park, we all saw firsthand that the appropriate solution was not just to force these people out of their homes,” Hewins said. “Students were very excited to learn that the judge agreed and saw the injustice that shutting down the park would cause for residents.”
As for the next steps for Duroville and its residents, Hewins says it likely will be a long and complicated process to improve the health and safety standards there, one that is further complicated by the fact that it is located on American Indian land.
“LAAB is extremely proud to have played but a small role in CRLA's efforts to keep residents in their homes in Duroville,” Hewins said. “We hope that CRLA will keep us updated about their efforts to help park residents and that we will be able to work with them again.”
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