The roads used to flood at Shady Lane Estates whenever it rained.Water pooled on the mostly-dirt roads that ran through the mobile home park, combining with the waste of constantly backed-up septic tanks. Early on those wet mornings, parents would pack their kids into cars and ferry them through the noxious slurry to the front gate to catch the school bus. Summer days weren’t much better. Afternoon temperatures regularly exceed 110 degrees in unincorporated Coachella Valley. The park’s antique electrical system regularly failed, knocking out AC units and turning the decades-old, poorly-insulated mobile homes into family-sized kilns. Rubi Castro, a mother of four, remembers placing her small children in large buckets of cold water until the power lurched back on.That chapter of the park’s history came to a celebrated end in late April when it reopened, renewed.
Funded partly through a state program aimed at rehabilitating California’s aging mobile home parks, Shady Lane’s robust new electrical system can now endure the draw of dozens of air conditioners. Pipes connect the park to the local water and sewer utilities. The roads are paved, there’s a shaded playground for kids and each of the 32 old mobile homes has been replaced with new, built-to-last units — plus eight more, to boot.
