Vista eyeing future of trailer parks

By: CRAIG TENBROECK | Saturday, January 12, 2008 8:31 PM PST ∞

North County Times

VISTA - There are plenty of reasons that Orange Grove, a small, hardscrabble trailer park on a hillside above East Vista Way, doesn't appear in the city's promotional brochures.

The trailers are mostly old and the pavement is cracked. Tiny yards are dotted with the unattractive detritus of low-income living: Tarps, frayed furniture and house wares too large to fit inside.

The Orange Grove trailer park is one of three in Vista that city officials have described as "not in the best repair." Now discussions are under way in the city's Department of Housing and Redevelopment about how to get park residents into better housing.

One option is for the city to build 90 to 100 units of low-cost housing at a different location and help park residents relocate there, said William Rawlings, the city's redevelopment director.

Rawlings said last week that he's been seeking a developer to partner on such an endeavor, but cautioned that the idea is still "very, very preliminary." He said he couldn't estimate the cost of such a project, or say where new low-income housing might be built.

Nothing has yet been proposed to the City Council, he added.

Owners of the trailer parks could not be reached for comment last week.

"This is not a sexy project," Rawlings said. "This is kind of a labor of love. You've really got to want to improve the lot of these folks to get this project off the ground."

Reasons to stay?

Trailer parks offer low-cost housing in a part of the country where cheap rent has become an oxymoron.

At Orange Grove, residents have no illusions about their surroundings. Some describe the trailer park as run-down and dilapidated - an "eyesore" - but say the low cost of living and relative privacy are reason enough to stick around.

"What the hell," said a grinning, 55-year-old resident named Dave who declined to give his last name. "It's just a box to crawl into anyway."

For park residents, talk of relocation generates both smiles and sighs.

Some say they would jump at the chance to ditch trailer life for an apartment or condominium - if it were affordable. Others say they'd feel surrounded in an apartment, or they're skeptical that their rent would stay the same.

"I'm not planning on going unless I'm forced out of here," said Marilyn Adams, a 58-year-old telemarketer who has lived for 15 years in Orange Grove.

Adams' lot is an outlier in the park - tucked in a corner, it features a spacious backyard where she has planted a host of fruit trees: orange, apple, fig, even kumquat. She's erected a small workshop that draws power from her home via an extension cord.

Her 1955 trailer is 38 feet long, with three rooms - including one that has been built on to the original body of the fifth-wheel motor home. She bought the trailer for $6,500 but spent thousands on improvements, she said.

Her rent? Roughly $500, she said.

Not everyone who lives in the park is wedded to the land.

Standing on a cluttered porch behind a gate made of PVC pipe, Paul Rodgers, 50, said the years hadn't been kind to Orange Grove - especially the plumbing.

"I would hop to a move real quick," he said.

But those comments drew a grimace from his wife, Jeanne, who took over from her mother a few years ago as park manager.

"I don't care for apartment living," she said.

"And then there's us ..."

City officials say their intent is not to purchase the park properties, then force park residents to relocate. Thus far, the city hasn't even contacted the property owners, he said.

"We're not in the business of making somebody move," Rawlings said. "We're trying to find them better housing ... If 90 people say we don't want to move, well, we don't have a project."

Yet if residents do relocate, "we certainly don't want to have a vacant lot there," Rawlings added. "As an afterthought, we'd look at how we would redevelop those sites."

Each of the trailer parks is in a neighborhood where the city is planning for aggressive development.

Both Vista RV Park and Elms Trailer Estates are in the city's South Santa Fe Avenue "revitalization area" -- a blighted strip that the city has long planned to convert into multistory buildings with retail shops, restaurants and condominiums.

Orange Grove is adjacent to a 16-acre vacant lot where a developer recently won approval for "The Vineyards," a modern development with dozens of houses fronted by tall, live-work lofts.

But Rawlings said that none of the park properties is particularly valuable to the city. They're relatively small, he said, and Orange Grove, in particular, would be tough to develop because of its steep slopes.

"This is not prime real estate," he said. "There's no reason to do this other than to improve the housing stock."

Standing near a neighbor's trailer last week, Dave said he wasn't surprised that Orange Grove had drawn the attention of City Hall. He gestured across the street to a shopping center under renovation.

"Everything's getting a face-lift around here," Dave said. "And then there's us ..."

Devil in the details

A few miles away, at the Vista RV Park in central Vista, Angelica Chavez, 24, smiled at the thought of a low-cost apartment with enough floor space to accommodate her 11-year-old son's wheelchair.

There's not enough room in the tiny trailer, which is shared by two adults and two children, so the wheelchair stays outside.

For Dave, a carpenter and a five-year resident of Orange Grove, the devil would be in the relocation details.

Would he have enough space for his tools (now he can store them in his neighbor's shed), or would he have to pony up cash for a storage unit?

"I can upgrade from trailer trash to apartment trash," he said with a chuckle. "But in the long run, am I going to be any better off?"

Contact staff writer Craig TenBroeck at (760) 901-4062 or ctenbroeck@nctimes.com.