Heat wave leads to misery at Modesto mobile home park by Tuolumne River, Highway 99

As the heat climbs in homes across Stanislaus County, mobile home dwellers swelter in a hardscrabble community bordered by Highway 99 and the Tuolumne River near the Seventh Street bridge.

“Trailers are a lot hotter than houses,” said one Sunrise Village Mobile Home Park resident flatly as temperatures sweated their way up toward triple digits. The National Weather Service forecast calls for the mercury to climb to 106 degrees by Tuesday and stay above 100 through the Fourth.

Children used to cool off in small plastic wading pools, parents said, but for the past few years, the park has not allowed them, saying its insurance does not cover them.

“Everyone thinks I’m the bad guy, but I’m not the one that makes the rules. I just enforce them,” park manager Tim Collins said Thursday. Kids walking by could fall in and drown in very little water, he said.

Collins said he runs a sprinkler outside the laundry room on hot days for kids to cool off, but park residents did not seem to know about it.

No children were outside that afternoon among the spaces numbered up to 186 for mobile homes, fifth-wheel trailers and a few tiny houses. The nearest park, Mancini Park, is a 20-minute walk.

None of the Modesto parks have splash play this year, to conserve water. But swimming at the Johansen High pool is available 1 to 4 p.m., except Sundays and July 3-4, said Ashley Weaver, recreation supervisor with the city. Modesto Area Express’ Route 29 comes within a quarter mile of the park. An online route planner lists the route as taking an hour with transfer, $3 in tolls and a half-mile walk.

And then there is the cool, shady river, meandering just beyond the cement block fence around the park. The water is low this year, but residents said that just by the bridge is a deep spot kids like to jump in.

“I won’t let my kids go down there. It’s too dangerous,” said park resident Nicole De La Torre. The mobile home she lives in overlooks the riverbank, where she said she sees prostitutes plying their trade daily. Broken glass, garbage and used syringes line the well-beaten paths to the water.

Her 1-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son try to stay cool with wet rags, extra fans and the weak flutter of a rusted old air conditioner. Her son plays in a mudhole she makes with a hose in the 6-foot space between metal-sided units. But at least he hasn’t had heat stroke, she said, like her neighbor’s boy.

De La Torre spoke freely because her husband has finished school and gotten a job, increasing their income tenfold. On June 30, they are out of there, she said.

The De La Torres took the park owners to court over habitability, she said, showing pictures of cockroaches, black mold and a boarded-over sewer break under the floorboards. The couple lost, court records show.

Collins said the property is owned by BTK Realty in San Leandro, but there was no listing online or with the state of California for any company by that name. Property records list it as owned by Sunrise MHC LLC of Martinez since December.

De La Torre and others said they pay up to about $600 a month, depending on utilities, for one of 186 units. Some sit vacant, a weathered yellow “Prohibited Occupancy” notice from the state Department of Housing and Community Development on a window.

Other residents, fearing eviction, spoke to The Modesto Bee only on condition their names not appear in print.

One longtime resident, who raised her kids at the park, worries about dangers facing children who head to the river to cool off. The fruitless mulberries that shade many of the homes were trimmed in the summer last year. Wheezing swamp coolers cannot keep up, and electricity was unexpectedly off for a day last week. Her mother’s home oxygen relied on battery backup.

All of this has been part of the summer rumble of complaints and inaction for years. But a killing last Sunday afternoon under the Seventh Street bridge changed the conversation.

No children could be seen along the river in the heat of the day Thursday or Friday. Young adults from the trailer park and the airport neighborhood playing on inner tubes or swimming in the river on Friday said kids have mostly stayed away since the homicide.

Kids as young as 6 were at the river that day, the longtime park resident said. She knows at least eight who witnessed the June 21 slaying of Danny Wallace Jr.

“He was beaten up, drowned and stabbed in the face – it’s too much. Kids shouldn’t be there,” she said.

Police have not released Wallace’s cause of death. As of Thursday, a 17-year-old male and 29-year-old Daniel Ray Gassett had been booked on suspicion of murder.

A mother standing beside her agreed, but added she can’t afford to move. The home she bought under a rent-to-own agreement several years ago is too decrepit to move or to sell. She pays $450 a month for the space. For her family, joining the military is the plan to leave.

“Most people here are on Social Security and welfare. They have nowhere else to go,” she said.

This story was originally published June 27, 2015 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Heat wave leads to misery at Modesto mobile home park by Tuolumne River, Highway 99."