The raw sewage may be gone, but tension lingers at the Velladao
Trailer Park in south Gilroy.
The raw sewage may be gone, but tension lingers at the Velladao Trailer Park in south Gilroy.
Depending on who you talk to, the mobile home community at the corner of Monterey Road and Luchessa Avenue is a cluster of disobedient residents or an expensive trap.
Estella Garcia received a $243.28 PG&E bill for the electricity she and her son, Omar Servin, used between Dec. 13 and Jan. 12. When the current is not fading in and out due to faulty connections throughout the park, they live modestly in their 250-square-foot trailer with two TVs, an overhead fluorescent light, a new, energy-efficient refrigerator and an electric hot-water heater. Garcia buys her own gas to fuel the cluttered stove, she said, and the two do not have air conditioning, and they only used an electric space heater at nights during the winter. The average Santa Clara County resident’s 2007 PG&E bill was $83.27 a month, according to PG&E Spokesperson Brian Swanson.
However simple her living may be, though, Swanson confirmed that Garcia had actually been undercharged. In fact, the park’s owner, Tom Velladao, had been both over- and under-charging the other 24 tenants, but in good faith, Swanson said.
“We’ve investigated this matter, and as far as we could tell, (Velladao’s) intentions were good,” said Swanson, referring to confusion that can arise when landlords divide a park’s total bill among multiple trailers that use different amounts of electricity and qualify for different rate discounts. “We’re making him get it right going forward, and now he’s registered for PG&E’s billing service for mobile home parks, where we basically calculate the charges” based on meter readings. Swanson added that Velladao was also unintentionally passing his trailer park discount onto his tenants instead of collecting it himself.
But electricity is not the only issue.
A crowd of about 30 men, women and children slowly gathered in the park’s center earlier this month, and one by one, they each complained about their living conditions. Servin even had a tape recording of the park’s on-site manager, Joe Aguilar, threatening residents four days after police showed up at the park to respond to an assault complaint against him. Aguilar allegedly shoved a tenant during an argument March 20 and faces assault charges, according to GPD Sgt. Jim Gillio. Four days after the incident, Servin said he recorded Aguilar fuming.
On the tape Aguilar warns tenants that he will call immigration authorities – which some of the residents said they feared – and he also challenged a tenant to a fight on the railroad tracks behind the park.
Conversations with Joe and his wife, Nancy Aguilar, and e-mails from Velladao paint a different picture.
“Both Joe and Nancy Aguilar are straight-up, working class people who have lived at the park for several decades, and I respect both of them and their ability to deal with tenants,” Velladao wrote in an e-mail. “There are always one or two tenants that are disgruntled about something, and Joe is usually the target of these one or two disgruntled tenants … I have witnessed firsthand the way these one or two tenants interact with Joe, i.e., they sometimes act as if they do not want to recognize Joe’s authority as the on-site manager, and I am sure that this is what is causing these incidents.”
Joe Aguilar, who said he has lived in the park since 1986 and has also experienced finicky electricity, pointed to outdoor couches and washers clogging pathways between trailers as examples of disobedient tenants: “How is a fireman going to get through here?” he said, shaking his head in reference to fire codes and state building requirements that he said a handful of tenants regularly flout.
“They don’t listen to anything. I want to live good, but these people build like they’re in Mexico. This is America. This is not Mexico,” Aguilar said before nodding toward an old “No Parking” sign that hung on a fence in the rear of the park, where Jesus Dias’s Chevy truck sat. “Just look at this,” Aguilar huffed.
A few minutes later, though, Dias pointed out the fresh nail holding up the sign and claimed that he had been parking there for the past three years. Dias was one of 21 trailer owners who signed two petitions since April 2007, after the four-month saga in 2006 when state authorities forced Velladao and his residents to clean up a sewage-laden park.
The subsequent petitions mainly protest a discriminatory manager, shoddy electricity and unsafe wiring. PG&E said the park deserves new wiring, but the vocal group of residents lamented that the more they complain, the less gets done. And as far as moving out, they added, forget about it.
“We’re trapped. We can’t sell,” said Pedro Diaz, a tenant who has lived in the park for three and a half years. Diaz and others complained that when they try to sell their spots to prospective residents, Velladao imposes impossible credit standards. Colleen Brokaw, a staff attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance, said she successfully intervened on behalf of a tenant earlier this month who was trying to move out and had arranged for a resident.
Before Velladao allowed the new tenants, according to Brokaw, he and his employees insisted that they just wanted to make sure any new tenants would be responsible. In an e-mail response to Brokaw, Velladao wrote, “All I require is that the prospective buyer have a decent credit rating, a job and no substantial criminal record … Both prospective buyers have had the lowest credit ratings.”
The dozen or so children riding bikes, playing with dogs and running around the park seemed oblivious to all the tension, just happy to play in a sunny, sewage-free environment – even if all the problems from the past haven’t faded away.
Park’s 2006 troubles
â– March/April: Seeping sewage found, clean-up ordered
â– May: Sewage problems continue
â– June: Ultimatum imposed, Velladao proposes major fixes
â– July: Park passes state review
