When Theres Arsenic in the Water, but We Have Nowhere to Go The New York Times
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Cecilia Cruz works in the grape vineyards, and has lived at Oasis for 16 years with her husband, Pedro Cruz, a construction worker. But the notice sent to residents citing the improvements also included the warning not to drink, cook with, bathe in, or brush their teeth with the park water. No comprehensive study has been done of the causes and extent of the health issues at Oasis, and the agricultural work most residents do consistently ranks among the nation’s most hazardous occupations. They have varied from persistent rashes and hair loss to kidney disease like Mr. Campos Ochoa’s and even cancer — that residents and their advocates say may be caused by contaminated water. Please be advised, by submitting this complaint you give permission for DHCR MHP to provide the park owner with a copy of your complaint as part of the complaint processing. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Last year, more than 80,000 homes were sold on MHVillage with a combined transaction value exceeding $3 billion. Fernando’s sister, Stephanie Ortiz, 20, said the family would not have moved into the park if they had known about the problems with the water. They were unaware of the problems at the park when they moved in, and the family of farmworkers was desperate.
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In a lengthy statement, he said the county has been working with local, state and federal partners to extend clean water and build more housing. A state audit recently found that just in California, one of the nation’s richest states, almost a million people lack access to clean drinking water. Most at risk are often farmworkers, who have been forced to live in substandard housing in isolated communities far from municipal water systems, often relying on water from agricultural wells. THERMAL, Calif. — Three times a week, Pascual Campos Ochoa, 26, loads up a duffel bag with a brown fleece blanket and a plastic container of oatmeal. A van picks him up from the dusty trailer park where he lives — where stray dogs wander among the carcasses of old cars and working electricity is not a given — and takes him to a clinic for kidney dialysis. Many of those farmworkers have found themselves at Oasis Mobile Home Park, a place whose name belies a troubled reality — where many residents said they didn’t know about the water when they moved in.
After January 31, 2020, New York State Homes and Community Renewal will no longer accept manufactured home park registrations. In California’s Coachella Valley, worries over health risks from arsenic-polluted water and a lack of affordable housing have come crashing down on some of the state’s most vulnerable workers. But the effort to decide what to do with the money has been slow and contentious. But residents have claimed the park’s longtime owner, who died last year, increased the rent to offset the cost of providing bottled water after the E.P.A. order in 2019 and made it difficult for residents to pick up the water they needed.
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These workers and their families live in mobile home parks, which have for decades made up the region’s primary affordable housing supply. But as demand for housing has rippled across the state, they have been left with fewer and fewer options. Julia Giarmoleo, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said that improvements had been made but satisfactory lab tests have not been consistent. She added that untreated water with high arsenic levels has still been distributed to people’s homes and that various parts of the E.P.A. order, including developing adequate plans to flush out the system, have not been met. Until the park shows consistently satisfactory water-quality readings for a year, it will be required to provide bottled water for residents.
They had moved to Oasis after being forced to relocate from Indio, where they had lived for seven years. The couple did not qualify for low-income housing because they are undocumented, so they rented a small, run-down three-bedroom trailer at Oasis. A family doctor told the couple to not let their three boys drink or come in contact with the water. But sometimes, before leaving for school, the boys brush their teeth in a hurry and rinse with water from the faucet, instead of clean bottled water that their mother leaves by the bathroom sink. Gisela Santiago had been living in a small trailer in a park near Oasis, with her husband and eight other people, until they got their run-down mobile home in Oasis for free seven years ago.
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Fill out the form below to send a message to this community and request more information on this park or schedule a tour. After Fernando’s kidney surgery last year, his grandmother introduced him to the story of St. José Luis Sánchez del Rio, a 14-year-old boy who was killed for refusing to denounce his Catholic faith. Last year, Fernando had kidney surgery, and he is still undergoing treatments, the outcome of which is uncertain. While the family lived at Oasis, Mrs. Torres’s son, Fernando Ortiz, 17, was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Months after Marisela Torres and her family moved out of Oasis into Mountain View Estates she still bursts into tears at the mention of her former home. Mr. Gastelum’s colleague, Lesly Figueroa, pointed out a swath of land with striking mountain views slated to become an exclusive golf course.
New management at the park said it has spent more than $400,000 since November to fix the water problems — plus more than $840,000 to provide alternative water. But residents are still being warned not to drink the water or use it for cooking, bathing or brushing their teeth. Government agencies, including the E.P.A. and Riverside County, as well as community advocates, all agreed that the living conditions at Oasis have been untenable. YP - The Real Yellow PagesSM - helps you find the right local businesses to meet your specific needs. Search results are sorted by a combination of factors to give you a set of choices in response to your search criteria.
The family was placed on a waiting list this year to relocate to Mountain View Estates — a newer mobile home community with paved streets and a tidy park. Mrs. Santiago said she was running out of patience waiting for the county to help her family. Raul Ruiz, the United States representative who grew up in the area and lived in a trailer home as a child, said a solution should involve relocating residents to preferential housing and the construction of affordable housing. Because of its size and residents’ complaints about other health and sanitation issues, Oasis has been a magnet for attention. But dangerous levels of arsenic have been found in numerous small systems not hooked up to the regional Coachella Valley Water District’s water system, according to the E.P. The New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal’s Manufactured Homes Program has the power and duty to enforce and ensure compliance with the provisions of Real Property Law Section 233 .
“Preferred” listings, or those with featured website buttons, indicate YP advertisers who directly provide information about their businesses to help consumers make more informed buying decisions. YP advertisers receive higher placement in the default ordering of search results and may appear in sponsored listings on the top, side, or bottom of the search results page. Mike Walsh, a Riverside County housing official whose job includes planning for how best to use the $30 million grant, said that relocating Oasis residents was a complicated game of musical chairs. He said that many of the families moving in behind them have left homes where conditions were even worse. Officials and advocates agree that it will take years to provide affordable housing for California’s poorest workers and to complete needed water and sewer upgrades.
A 2017 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s drinking water infrastructure a “D” rating and said the United States needs to invest $1 trillion in the next 25 years to upgrade water systems. Please choose whether or not you wish to save this view before you leave; or choose Cancel to return to the page.
A manufactured home park is defined as a contiguous parcel of privately owned land which is used for the accommodation of three or more manufactured homes occupied for year-round living. They comprise a vulnerable community that often encounters difficulties due to the fact that the majority of manufactured home households are both homeowners and tenants. The uniqueness of this type of tenancy combined with the high cost of moving the units and, in certain areas of New York State, the scarce number of parks with vacancies, makes tenants' rights of the utmost concern to the manufactured home park tenants.
The couple own their trailer, which is in good condition, and they don’t want to leave it behind. The Cruzes hope the county will help them move out of Oasis to a piece of land they are planning to buy. The couple migrated with their sons from Michoacán to the valley to work in the fields. They moved to Oasis 16 years ago from a similar, smaller mobile home in a park nearby. Not long after the family moved into Oasis, Mr. Campos Ochoa, who now works in irrigation in the valley, started to have kidney problems. The dilemma reflects both the continuing plight of California’s largely immigrant agricultural workers and how the state’s housing crisis has also become a health and safety emergency for many of its most vulnerable residents.
Our community fosters a culture where residents stay longer in their homes with our attractive leasing plans. Find out how Mountainview is the right fit for you and your manufactured home today. Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, MHVillage Inc. is the nation’s premier online marketplace for buying and selling manufactured homes with more than 25 million unique visitors annually.
For Leadership Counsel organizers like Omar Gastelum, who grew up at a park not far from Oasis, the fact that families have been living in unsafe conditions at Oasis is made more galling by the wave of luxury development sprouting up in the region. The Thermal Club, a gated vacation home development that includes private auto-racing tracks, is just a 10-minute drive away. Advocates say the county has not invested enough in planning or infrastructure to house the region’s farmworkers — many of whom are undocumented and are hesitant to speak up about poor housing conditions.
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