Farmworkers find a bumper crop of squalor in Coachella Valley trailer parks

[Liberal_in_LA]

Farmworkers find a bumper crop of squalor in Coachella Valley trailer parks


THERMAL, Calif. — When five farmworker families pooled their money to build the Don Jose Mobile Home Park on a plot of dusty land here, they knew little about building permits.

So they jury-rigged almost everything: Electricity was tapped from a post meant to power one well, the dirt road was covered in rugs to keep down the choking dust.


Twenty years later, some things have improved. But the park is still without permits. Its 55 residents live in aging trailers and cope with prolonged power outages. Their dirt road turns to pools of mud when it rains.

But its manicured lawns, whitewashed iron gate and carefully tended rose bushes signal that despite its flaws, it is home.

This part of the Coachella Valley, with its abundant agricultural fields, is dotted with unpermitted mobile home parks, housing thousands of farmworkers in dozens of tiny neighborhoods that were never designed to be permanent.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-farmworker-trailers-20151006-story.html

[snooper2]

1. it's jerry-rigged not jury-rigged jeez