Thread: Ca-Citrus grower faces eviction

Friday, July 11, 2008
Citrus grower faces eviction
Letting Ignacio Lujano continue to live on city land would be gift of public funds, city official says.
By VIK JOLLY and PETER SCHELDEN
The Orange County Register


SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO When the old man with bad knees and an irregular heartbeat got ready to walk around what's left of a ranch once sprawling with orange groves, his son handed him a shovel instead of a cane.

Ignacio Lujano might want to poke around, turn over some soil, push a dead branch aside – which he did only a short while later on a stretch past a small stand of orange trees.

In his 84-year-old hands, toughened by working in dirt fields since he was 7 or 8, the shovel is a precision instrument.

The area he's walking on a recent day – some 42 acres of city-owned open space adjacent to the I-5 on the northwest end of San Juan Capistrano called Swanner Ranch – has been his bread and butter and his back yard for nearly 40 years.

In a roughly 1,100-square-foot turquoise, four-bedroom home at the front entrance to the property, Lujano was both parents to his nine children and two step children, raising them with an iron fist for 16 years after his first wife died of cancer, before remarrying and having two more kids.

This is where he slept outside under the stars and where at times he carried a pistol to watch over the expanse of avocados and oranges that he helped nurture for decades.

Now, he faces eviction from the property he thought he would live on until he died.

'THINGS CHANGE'

The city has given Lujano until Aug. 14 to move or face legal action. But it also is encouraging him to apply for affordable housing in the city.

Cindy Russell, assistant city manager, said the city appreciates that Lujano has for decades tilled the land at Swanner Ranch.

"The city is sympathetic to the fact that this has changed and change is often times difficult," said Russell.

The city acquired 75 acres in 1992, including Swanner Ranch, two years after San Juan voters approved the first bond measure of its kind in Orange County to enable taxpayers to buy land for parks.

Since the bond initiative was approved, San Juan has also added 104 acres on the north end, and owns another 56 acres in the center of town.


Late last year the city discovered that two of Lujano's adult sons were also living on the property, not permitted in an agreement between him and the city, officials said.

Furthermore, the city says it has had to supplement maintenance of the orchards, now left only on about five acres, and the surrounding area – at taxpayer's expense – for the past few years.

It began proceedings last year to terminate Lujano's month-to-month tenancy on the property, giving him a deadline to vacate by Sept. 1, 2007. Roger Swanner, of Wichita Falls, Texas, who along with his brother inherited a portion of the ranch property, attempted to intervene on Lujano's behalf.

Since Lujano had worked for the Swanners since 1970 and lived on the property, the city agreed to keep him on after it acquired the land.

"At the time the city wanted him to take care of it," said Swanner, reached by telephone. "I'd love to see him stay there to live the rest of his life."

Swanner said he has no knowledge of a second agreement that the Lujanos say exists – but have not been able to produce and still hope to find – between Lujano and the city that allows him to live on the property until he dies.

"Things change and it's hard for older people to change with it," said Swanner, 70. "I know that feeling."

It was the maintenance subsidy that convinced city officials that a change had to be made in the deal it struck with Lujano in 1992, which allowed him and his immediate family to live and tend to the orchard and structures on five of the 42 acres.

The city also asked Lujano to execute a quitclaim deed acknowledging that he had no ownership in the property. When Lujano later told the city that he had been receiving $500 – in addition to use of the house – for orchard maintenance, the city agreed to match it. The payment has been stopped.

"We've had to supplement (maintenance) and so in all fairness we need to take it all over," Russell said. Allowing Lujano to continue to live there when he's not providing maintenance would amount to a gift of public funds, she said.

AGRICULTURAL PAST

Farmers from San Juan's golden age of oranges—from the 1920s until the end of World War II—remember deals that allowed retiring long-term farmhands like Lujano to stay on the farm until they died.

James Bathgate recalled Willy Jimenez, a man who helped work his family's orange grove until he became too old to withstand the demanding physical work of the farm.

"We gave him a bonus at Christmas in a good year, and that's about all he got," Bathgate said. "Then we thought, 'We could probably set up a thing that could help him in the good years,' and that's what we did. We felt fortunate that we had a worker of his quality, and we wanted to give him some recognition."

Jimenez was allowed to stay in a small house on the grove property, and so was long-time worker Mel Rosenbaum who lived across from Lujano. But Bathgate said not every long-term worker was allowed to stay on a farm after retirement. Such a deal was made on a case-by-case basis, and depended on what the owner could afford, what the worker would require and what was good for the farm.

Lujano, one of the last remaining farmers connected to Orange County's citrus past, appears resigned to moving.

Born in Holbrook, Ariz., in 1924, he was taken by his father to Mexico for reasons he can't fully remember. He began working the fields in the state of Morelos at a tender age, and then returned to the U.S. in 1958 to look for work, finding it on San Juan's farmland.

"The big problem is now, now that they want me thrown out," he says. "Why today? Why they didn't tell me in time when I was a little more strong so I can go and find another job."

"They wait until now that I can't even walk," he says, coughing. "I can't even walk now …They have to wait until the last moment of my life to do whatever they've done … That's the way things go sometimes."

He laughs.

Money has meant little to him, says Lujano, who for all his years of plowing and tilling the land has a few thousand dollars in savings and for the most part earned no more than $500 a month. He believes in making "a living out of your own sweat."

"I'm OK because I am alive. The life I've been having here, that's a good life, not artificial life. I have been living here just the way I wanted," he says.

He turns the key in the ignition of his rusted 1963 Chevrolet pickup, which roars to life after a few cranks. Even though he doesn't drive anymore, his prized truck will go with him wherever he moves. His son, Alex, says it will likely be in open country somewhere in Lake Elsinore.

"I gotta have a little place where I can get out," says Lujano.

He pauses and leans on his shovel. Then, with the tool crunching against the gravel at a slow rhythm, he makes his way towards the barn, a repository for his old tools – avocado and orange clippers and harvest bags among them – and other items he has collected over decades.

Contact the writer: 949-465-5424 or vjolly@ocregister.com

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/luja ... il-swanner

Letting Ignacio Lujano continue to live on city land would be gift of public funds, city official says.

Oh that's rich, isn't it? Throw out an 84 year old US CITIZEN, but no problem with the swarm of illegal aliens freeloading on OUR public funds? The city should be ashamed of itself!