Residents of squalid mobile home park may be forced to leave homes
—By Lori Craig
Just a couple hours’ drive from the USC Law campus, yet a world away, sits the Desert Mobile Home Park.
Located in Coachella Valley, the development is rife with health and safety problems and has been cited for violations including open sewage and faulty wiring. The federal government is attempting to permanently close the park, forcing its residents to move out of the dilapidated trailers and unpaved streets.
Against this backdrop of despair, the park’s residents recently found reason for hope when a group of USC Law students visited the park during the final weekend of their winter break. During their visit, organized by the Legal Aid Alternative Breaks project (LAAB), 29 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.
Along with Malissa Barnwell-Scott and Nancy Cervantes of USC Law’s Office of Public Service, the students spent two days conducting surveys of the park’s residents to address relocation issues, labor and employment, and worker health safety.
LAAB President Jessica Hewins ’10 said CRLA’s case will go to trial in April.
“They have these two goals at trial: one is to keep the trailer park open so people don’t have to move, and the second is to improve the conditions,” Hewins said. “But if, for some reason, the residents do have to move, there are not really a lot of possibilities. Low-income housing is really unavailable in the Coachella Valley: there are wait lists for mobile home parks, and there aren’t a lot of apartments available.”
The Desert Mobile Home Park, more commonly known as Duroville, after owner Harvey Duro, consists of 270 trailers on 40 acres on the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Reservation in the Coachella Valley.
The park’s migrant population is estimated at anywhere from 1,000 to 6,000 people. Its residents are mostly of indigenous Mexican heritage and those who have employment are farm workers, landscapers and construction workers.
“The residents of the mobile park clearly had no resources to afford most things, definitely not to afford legal services,” said Carolina Romanelli ’11. “Many of them expressed barely having enough money to eat, or purchase hygiene products. Most of them work in the fields, for which they are exposed to long hours of work under the sun, and even then they rarely make enough money to pay rent somewhere else.”
Among the questions students tried to answer: If Duroville closes, where will its residents go? Do they have money for a deposit on an apartment? Will they have jobs? Do they have money to buy a new trailer?
“It was a mobile home park, but the houses aren’t mobile,” Hewins said. “They would either fall apart if moved, or the residents don’t have the money to move them. We need to help CRLA present to the judge, ‘If you do close down this park, look at all these other problems that you’re going to have to solve for these people.’”
Because the park has a large indigenous population, its residents have a real sense of community and are scared of the prospect of having to move, Hewins said. At the same time, parents don’t want to leave the bright spot in the community – a newly built school.
“I really hope CRLA wins the case and the government aids the trailer park enough for them to rehabilitate it to decent living conditions,” Romanelli said.
The students’ trip was the second annual winter project organized by LAAB. The group travels to the Gulf Coast to provide legal services each spring.
“What we really wanted to provide for students was an opportunity to get outside of L.A. and see a different community,” Hewins said. “This is almost in our backyard, but it’s still really different from the work students do through Public Interest Law Foundation clinics in the local L.A. community.
“I also was really interested in this project because I think students don’t get exposure to the migrant farm worker community in law school at all. I think it was a new experience for everyone.”
To learn more about California Legal Rural Assistance, visit www.crla.org.
Previous Article
