Trailer Park

After months of negotiation and a lawsuit filed against the city, the Santa Monica City Council last week approved plans to develop a 377-unit development on a site that is currently home to a trailer park. Residents of Santa Monica's Village Trailer Park had long protested the development, which would force the demolition of the park to make way for the apartments. Park residents argued that moving would uproot their lives and shake their peace of mind. What followed was a messy back-and-forth involving two incarnations of the city council, which approved the development agreement in November, then, after some new members had been elected, rescinded that approval.

After months of negotiation and a lawsuit filed against the city, the Santa Monica City Council last week approved plans to develop a 377-unit development on a site that is currently home to a trailer park. Residents of Santa Monica's Village Trailer Park had long protested the development, which would force the demolition of the park to make way for the apartments. Park residents argued that moving would uproot their lives and shake their peace of mind. What followed was a messy back-and-forth involving two incarnations of the city council, which approved the development agreement in November, then, after some new members had been elected, rescinded that approval.

Streets once filled with rotting garbage have been cleared. Most of the menacing wild dogs are gone. Shady employees peddling drugs have been let go. Fire hazards and illegal businesses have been removed. A year after a federal judge rejected government efforts to shut down the trailer park known as Duroville, this cramped warren of banged-up trailers and relentless poverty is experiencing something of a renaissance. It's still hot, ugly and crowded, but the air of despair and fear has lifted.

Plans are in the works at the 1940s-era Anchor Trailer Port in Costa Mesa to convert the residential park to condominiums. But as decisions and approvals make their way through administrative channels, some residents say they feel confused, cheated and adrift. Others know the change was inevitable but just want their fair share of moving costs and per diems. The tentative move-out date is Aug. 24. The developers say they hear residents' concerns and are being generous. City staff has chipped in more than 100 hours toward the task of helping them move.

When residents of the Imperial Carson Mobile Estates trailer park yell "Fire!" they don't have to wait for the fire department. A squad of neighbors pushing a bright red three-wheel firefighting cart will rush to their aid. Residents of this well-tended park at 21111 Dolores St. have banded together to prepare themselves for fires, earthquakes and other emergencies.

June Manning has multiple forms of arthritis, and at 84, just mopping the floor is a challenge. So she said the idea of moving out of her spacious, well-kept trailer home is giving her nightmares. After a six-year battle with a local developer, Manning and her neighbors at Santa Monica's Village Trailer Park must prepare for eviction. "I'm so stressed out," she said softly. "I'm scared, because I have no place to go. " Manning is one of several park residents who are elderly, have health problems or both.

OASIS, Calif. - Past the new clubhouse and neat landscaping at the Mountain View Estates mobile home park, rows of dusty lots sit vacant, waiting for new units. This is to be the new home for residents of Duroville, the infamous Riverside County trailer park that houses farmworkers in conditions that until recently resembled a Third World slum. But the move to Mountain View has been thrown into question by the recent demise of California's redevelopment agencies. "It's conceivable all of this will be mothballed," Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit said, glancing toward the first of 181 brand-new mobile homes that the county plans to install here.

A fire Monday destroyed one trailer and damaged another at a Chula Vista trailer park, officials said. The fire started about 3:30 p.m. at the Brentwood Mobile Homes Park in the 1100 block of Industrial Blvd. The Chula Vista Fire Department is investigating. No injuries were reported.

Tornadoes hopscotched through southeast Alabama, slightly injuring five trailer-park residents and scattering brightly wrapped Christmas gifts over a wide area. A spokesman for the Houston County Emergency Management Agency said some of the victims were taken to a hospital, where they were treated and released. "Broken bones were the worst thing," spokesman Shelby Womack said.

A security guard was shot to death at a trailer park set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, New Orleans police said. The shooting was in Gentilly, a section of the city that flooded during Hurricane Katrina. A few hours earlier, another man was shot and killed near the Guste public housing complex. The deaths brought the city's homicide total to 34 this year, compared to last year's 161.

June Manning has multiple forms of arthritis, and at 84, just mopping the floor is a challenge. So she said the idea of moving out of her spacious, well-kept trailer home is giving her nightmares. After a six-year battle with a local developer, Manning and her neighbors at Santa Monica's Village Trailer Park must prepare for eviction. "I'm so stressed out," she said softly. "I'm scared, because I have no place to go. " Manning is one of several park residents who are elderly, have health problems or both.

Authorities are investigating whether some of the seven people arrested in a shootout that killed two Louisiana deputies may have ties to extremist anti-government movements, law enforcement officials told the Los Angeles Times. Deputies had been conducting surveillance on several of the suspects for more than two months and considered them armed and dangerous,  DeSoto Parish Sheriff Rodney Arbuckle said in an interview with The Times. Their surveillance led them to believe that several of those under watch held anti-government beliefs and were heavily armed, Arbuckle said.

Four years after a dilapidated Coachella Valley trailer park known as Duroville became a national symbol of slum housing, Riverside County officials were well into investing millions in a solution: building a new mobile home community for hundreds of the park's impoverished residents. But the plan abruptly stalled this spring when cash-hungry state officials yanked back $12.1 million in funds that local officials needed to complete the project. The action "puts in limbo the health and safety of men, women and children who had planned to leave the squalor of Duroville for a safe, clean home," complained Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit, who called the state move a "travesty.

OASIS, Calif. - Past the new clubhouse and neat landscaping at the Mountain View Estates mobile home park, rows of dusty lots sit vacant, waiting for new units. This is to be the new home for residents of Duroville, the infamous Riverside County trailer park that houses farmworkers in conditions that until recently resembled a Third World slum. But the move to Mountain View has been thrown into question by the recent demise of California's redevelopment agencies. "It's conceivable all of this will be mothballed," Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit said, glancing toward the first of 181 brand-new mobile homes that the county plans to install here.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A tornado hit Wichita on Saturday night as a series of storms tore through central Kansas. The number of injuries and the extent of the damage could not be immediately confirmed, but local media reported that a trailer park had been hit by the tornado. "Total destruction at trailer park south off 47th and Clifton," Wichita Eagle photographer Travis Heying (@travisheying) tweeted around 11 p.m., saying that he could hear voices in the rubble. He later tweeted photos at the Pinaire Mobile Home Park showing survivors walking through heavy damage, with one photo showing a man digging through the rubble: "This man shouted, 'Quiet!

Spare the parade Re "Occupy protest plan prompts beefed-up Rose Parade security," Dec. 28 It is a shame that the Occupy movement has plans to demonstrate at the Rose Parade. The parade is a New Year's tradition that is loved and watched by millions. People love the floats, marching bands and everything that goes with it; I don't think they want to see a group of protesters mixed in. This is not the kind of event for such things. It is also a shame that more money is being spent on extra security.

Re "Trailer Dwellers May Lose UCI Home," May 17: A little clarification could go a long way toward understanding our effort to keep our homes. When the first trailer dwellers occupied UCI, they acquiesced in the designation of the trailer park as a temporary use of university land. But for the last decade, at least, university officials haven't given incoming residents any notice that the park could be closed. And 20 years is a whole lot of temporary. At this time in the trailer park's history, on this tiny bit of university land, reasonable expectations of student residents outweigh mantra-like references to the university's master plan.

Citing slum conditions in the Sundown Trailer Park, Councilman Alex Padilla called Friday for the city to intervene. Padilla said trailers in the park on San Fernando Road have no running water, electricity or heat and the area is infested with rats. Padilla introduced a motion to have the park placed into a rent escrow account program that allows rent to be diverted by the city for repairs and maintenance.

When David Latham laid eyes on Santa Monica's Village Trailer Park in 1990, he fell in love with the abundant trees and vintage mobile homes. He paid about $20,000 for one of two vacant trailers and ever since has happily leased his rent-controlled space by the month amid the retro ambience. Latham, 66, an unemployed teacher, and dozens of other low-income residents are now scrambling to save their funky slice of paradise as the park's owner seeks to redevelop the nearly 4-acre site into a complex with residential units, offices and shops.

Penny Puckett came to Slab City and fell in love. After four years of "bumming around and hopping freight trains," the 25-year-old from Kansas City arrived at this hardscrabble section of the Imperial Valley desert and immediately embraced its sense of liberation from society's rules and norms. What others might view as desolation and deprivation, Puckett saw as a way to reduce life to its essence: water, food and shelter (plus Internet and cellular phone service). PHOTOS: Slab City "Slab City people have a great need to live with just the bare necessities and are happy about it," she said.