Duroville Family Gives Thanks for New Home

Nov. 23, 2012 / By

By AURORA SALDIVAR/Coachella Unincorporated

OASIS, Calif. – Just days before Thanksgiving, the Alvaro family left their home at the notoriously substandard Duroville trailer park for a new mobile home at the beautifully landscaped Mountain Views Estates.

The difference between the two mobile home parks, a mere six miles apart, is astounding. Duroville is plagued with shoddy trailers, poor infrastructure, and debris-lined streets. Mountain View Estates, on the other hand, has a community center, playground and athletic fields for residents.

“I’m just grateful that the vision is becoming a reality and that families will be able to live here in this wonderful place and not have to endure any hardships as they were at Duroville,” said Heidi Marshall, assistant director for Riverside County Economic Development Agency.

The Alvaros were among the 32 families to leave Duroville, a community of farmworkers near Mecca, for Mountain View Estates on November 16. Working with developer Bobby Melkesian and Desert Empire Homes, the county anticipates 75 families will move in by the end of 2012 and all 181 families will move in by the end of May 2013.

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Coachella Unincorporated

Coachella Unincorporated is a Youth Media Startup in the East Coachella Valley, funded by the Building Healthy Communities Initiative of The California Endowment and operated by New America Media in San Francisco. The purpose of the project is to report on issues in the community that can bring about change. Coachella Unincorporated refers to the region youth journalists cover but also to the unincorporated communities of the Eastern Valley with the idea to “incorporate” the East Valley into the mainstream Coachella Valley mindset.