Neighbors built a gate to keep people in a mobile home park out. It also traps them in.

Overnight, the gate tripled the travel time to the children’s elementary school. Later, it delayed a woman’s oxygen delivery. Every time a wildfire threatens their homes, it stands between residents and safety.

The sturdy gate is also an everyday reminder of the class divide separating the 350 homes in Cavalier Mobile Estates from the larger family homes of their neighbors on the other side of it.

Six years ago, South Oceanside neighbors banded together to raise thousands of dollars to build and lock a gate between them and the mobile home park next door. They said they were fed up with the increased traffic and parking issues that the mobile home residents caused. 

Those who live in the park have pleaded with them and the city of Oceanside for help ever since.

The gate means an everyday inconvenience for the mobile home park residents, who have to instead use the busy exit on Oceanside Boulevard, which adds time, traffic and a train crossing to every commute. 

But it also means serious accessibility issues during emergencies as they only have one other way in and out. 

Renata Engel has been fighting for her mobile home park community for years at City Council meetings and in conversations with the homeowners who built the gate. 

“I really honestly feel like it was more of a classist situation than it was even the parking, even the cars,” she said. “They just did not want people from Cavalier coming up here and spending time in their neighborhood.”

A crowdfunded gate

Once Cavalier Mobile Estates had a gate of its own.

The mobile home park installed it to block outside traffic from using their streets as a shortcut. The management and maintenance staff had keys to the gate and could open it for residents. 

In 2018, the park managers removed it and put in speed bumps to help with traffic instead. 

After the gate’s removal, South Oceanside resident Barbara Villasenor said her neighborhood next door began to have problems. She saw more speeding vehicles and more commercial trucks coming through with deliveries and more mobile home park residents parking in her neighborhood. 

“It became more than a nuisance, and most people were respectful, I want to say that, but there was starting to be petty theft in the area.” she said. “People didn’t feel like their kids could cross the street safely anymore because people were just zipping through.”

In August 2018, several of the residents of the Cavalier Mobile Estates spoke at a City Council meeting. They told the council members that not having a gate, and thereby keeping a second exit, helped alleviate traffic on Oceanside Boulevard and would be crucial for escaping the next fire.

Then Villasenor’s neighbors discovered something: She owned a tiny parcel of land between the public right of way and the mobile home park. In 2020, about a dozen of them came together and raised several thousand dollars to build a gate on that land. 

A GoFundMe campaign from the time began, “Do you enjoy the steady flow of traffic speeding through your neighborhood? Do you feel like it is safe for your kids to cross the street in your neighborhood?  If the answer is ‘No!’ read on… There is a way for you to help make a difference!” 

Oceanside city staff said that because the gate was being built on private property, there was nothing stopping the residents from building a gate as long emergency access was maintained. The city approved the gate in September 2020, and the neighbors built and locked the gate the next month. 

The whole thing frustrated Cavalier Mobile Estates resident Renee Potochan. 

“They were upset that their children didn’t have the freedom to be in the yards because of all the cars,” Potochan said. “Well, that was a joke to me because they have backyards. We don’t have backyards. So how could you even say something like that?” 

Trapped in an emergency

It did not take long for the emergency mobile home park residents had warned about to happen. 

In October 2020, just days after the neighbors installed and locked the gate, a fire broke out at one of the mobile homes and no one opened the gate. 

Then in December 2023, an even larger fire broke out and trapped many residents for over an hour.  Engel said the fire trucks blocked the front entrance and the back gate remained shut. Finally, someone reached Villasenor, who opened the gate. 

Blake Dorse, the division chief at the Oceanside Fire Department, remembers the December 2023 fire. He said his father’s house burned during it, but he couldn’t recall how long any resident may have been trapped. He said the city’s primary emergency response route is through the front of the mobile home park on Oceanside Boulevard and  the gated roadway serves as a secondary access option when needed.

But when neighboring cities’ fire departments arrive for assistance, they do not have access to the back gate. In 2020, that meant the Vista Fire Department at the back gate was unable to get in. 

Engel doesn’t blame the fire department for not opening the gate, but said that it demonstrates that in an emergency situation, opening the gate would not be a priority.

“They were doing what they needed to do,” Engel said. “We could have lost a lot of houses that day. It was bad. But it’s the fact that when their resources are thin … nobody’s going to be thinking about, ‘Oh my God, somebody’s got to run all the way around through South O and open that gate up because those people can’t get out otherwise.’”

Dorse said the 2023 fire did not require a total evacuation. 

“If an incident required residents to evacuate through the eastern end of the park because the primary route was blocked or unsafe, opening and securing the rear gate would become an operational priority for Fire and Police personnel,” he said. 

Engel has continued to document these experiences and ask the city for help. 

She suggested the city could use eminent domain to take the parcel from Villasenor, and then take down the gate, but Oceanside staff said the city can only use eminent domain on projects that benefit the larger public and not to benefit a private property owner or community. City staff also said a maintenance easement only allows for upkeep of public infrastructure and does not grant access rights.

Councilmember Jimmy Figueroa, whose district includes the park, said he visited once when he was campaigning and again last year to hear the residents’ concerns. 

He said that having only one entrance is a challenge. 

“I personally would like to see that gate open,” he told inewsource. 

But Figueroa also said he has talked to the city attorney and the fire chief and been told the gate was not in the city’s control. 

Villasenor has offered to give the mobile home park’s home owners association or the park management a key, but both have said they do not want to assume the liability. 

Bob Lannen, the HOA president, said he would accept a key only if he could make copies for all the residents. Villasenor said she doesn’t want that because she thinks “it would be abused” and not solve her neighborhood’s concerns. 

‘One way in and one way out’

There have been several occasions that residents — many of whom are elderly or have health or mobility issues — have been trapped from entering or exiting the park for stretches in a day. 

In January, the railroad crossing arms malfunctioned, and no one was able to get in or out of the park for over an hour, Engel said. 

Other times, accidents at the Interstate 5 and Oceanside Boulevard entrance block the residents. 

Residents also face everyday concerns like when Potochan, who cares for her mother, was waiting on an oxygen delivery for her after the driver got stuck at the gate. She had trouble explaining the delivery route, why it would take exponentially longer and why it would involve getting back on the highway. 

It wasn’t a delivery for which she could be patient. 

Liz Dragon, who has limited mobility, said she struggles to take her Great Dane to Marshall Park, just outside the gate, and now requires a roundabout route. 

“It’s an impairment, and you’re stuck one way in and one way out,” she said.

Lannen, the HOA president, has heard complaints from neighbors for years and worries about the future. 

“There’s going to be a situation where somebody needs to get out of this park quickly, and they’re not going to be able to go that way,” he said. “It’s ridiculous that the people that live here have to be that inconvenienced and have to go all the way around all the time because of that.”