For the Greater Good

The judge hearing the most recent Duroville case has ruled NOT to shut it down because the 4000 or so residents currently occupying the approximately 250 permanent mobile homes would have nowhere to go. He feels that the hardship to the residents of shutting the mobile home park down outweighs the benefits of taking action to remove the park and clean up the environmental issues caused by its existence.

Evidently there is no hardship to living without adequate running water and/or electricity, with raw sewage collecting in pits dug under the trailer toilets, no trash collection, unpaved streets, and packs of feral dogs roaming the area along with the many, many children who also live there. Perhaps the judge should have shared accommodations with the residents for a month before he made his final ruling: he probably thinks that an average of 15 residents per dwelling unit is just cozy, not crowded, sort of like an extreme camping experience right here in the Coachella Valley.

My first thought was "go home," since the majority of the residents are illegal Mexican citizens who have crossed into the country to work under the table. They take their cash back to Mexico every weekend as it is, so on the next trip home, they could stay with their families. Living in Mexico could not possibly be any worse than living in Duroville.

This issue has been tied up in courts for over a decade, and the decision is to keep the status quo! If that's not a sad commentary on the inability of our judicial system to make decisions when decisions need to be made, I don't know what it is.