Shack Attack Is Cleaning Up Desert

MORONGO BASIN, Calif. —  They used to give this part of California away. Those who could establish a homestead by building a 400-square-foot cabin and toughing out the arid land could claim deeds from the government.

Many did not make it. Their broken-down shacks, signs of failure in the shape of pink and turquoise and lemon yellow shoe boxes, dot the wide, open plains along California 247, the desert route to Big Bear, and California 62, which stretches past Joshua Tree National Park.

Half a century after most of the ramshackle buildings were hastily constructed, a local community group with a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is launching a shack attack.

After a decade of recession and a string of aftershocks following the 1992 Landers-Big Bear earthquakes, this far-flung land of cactus and sunning snakes is beginning to see glimmers of better economic times. A group of residents is determined to face the future without blighted relics of the past.

“They’re eyesores, but it cost so much to demolish them and the county didn’t have the money,” said Tom Ramirez, a San Bernardino County economic and community development analyst. “This is an example of finding a better way.”

No one knows exactly how many shacks there are. Estimates range from hundreds to 2,000. Some of the shacks have electric meters, some do not. Most are situated in remote communities such as Landers, Wonder Valley, Flamingo Heights and Johnson Valley--places where people often truck in water and the weekly bingo game is a treasured social event.

The Shack Attack Program has a “good cop, bad cop” strategy. Desert residents have spent three months identifying derelict properties and have sent the owners nicely worded form letters asking them to make repairs or take down the cabins. The letters point out that voluntary demolition will lower the owner’s tax bill by reclassifying the property as unimproved and offers owners a “unique opportunity” to help with desert restoration.

If an owner does not cooperate, or cannot be found, San Bernardino County’s Department of Code Enforcement will condemn the building and use the federal grant money to demolish it. Once the county is involved, a licensed contractor must be hired for $3,000 to $8,000 to tear down the shack. A $600 administrative cost is added. And the bill is passed on to the owner: A tax lien--usually more than the land is worth--is placed on the property.

So far, the most effective tool has been Polaroid photographs. “A lot of these properties were passed down and the absentee owners don’t have a clue about how bad it is,” said Carroll Mues, secretary-treasurer of the Basin Economic Improvement Advocates, the community group behind the program. “We send them a letter with a picture and the picture sells it. Next thing it’s whoa, that building disappeared.”

Grandchildren of World War II veterans who homesteaded the desert after the war will sometimes show up at Judy Brannen’s real estate office on the northern edge of Yucca Valley.

“They’ll say: ‘We inherited this piece of property and we don’t know where it is. We don’t know where we are,’ ” said Brannen, co-chairwoman of the community group. “To people from the city, this is the end of the Earth.”

Oddly, Brannen got involved in the shack program because she has a soft spot for the little buildings.

“I was incensed by the initial attitude of ‘tear ‘em down.’ Half the houses I sell were originally homesteader shacks that grew into houses. This program gives people a chance to board them up and make them safe before demolition.”

Most of the shacks are too far gone for redemption. A few hundred feet from John’s restaurant, one of the few commercial stops along California 247 near Yucca Valley, are the skeletal remains of a homestead someone once labored over. Two tall trees stand nearby, which in this desert must have once been protected saplings. A few shreds reveal there was once thick wood paneling.

Now doors and windows and even a wall are gone. Debris and broken glass are piled alongside a bare, hard platform where someone has left a bed pillow.

“This is completely typical. These shacks attract vagrants and vermin,” said Bob Dockendorff, a retired graphic artist who conceived and orchestrated Shack Attack. He points out that a school bus stops in front of this “tumbling heap.”

The desert, with its sun and wind and earthquakes, can quickly lay waste to an uncared-for structure, but what the desert does not get, neighbors make off with. “I’ve seen them take so many 2x4s from a vacant shack that a breeze could knock it over,” said Ruth Thompson, 88, who homesteaded in the Johnson Valley with her family 30 years ago. “You know the old saying, ‘What’s ripe to be picked, is going to be picked.’ ”

When Don Kral, 78, a Yucca Valley resident who owned a shack in Flamingo Heights, received one of the letters last month, he paid a neighbor to tear down the shack and use it for firewood.

Such an unofficial route is fine with the community members of Shack Attack.

“We can’t just come right out and tell people this, because government agencies are involved, but we don’t really care how they get rid of it--if they hire a contractor or get permits--we just want the shacks gone and the rubble properly disposed,” Dockendorff said.

Over the last 20 years, several efforts to clean up desert shacks fell flat, until the county got the idea of approaching federal officials and requesting grant money usually reserved for rebuilding blighted neighborhoods.

The program has forged a rare coalition, involving county supervisors from two districts, code enforcement officers, economic and community development officials and 10 neighborhood groups from unincorporated areas.

“The thing to look at here is what a community group can do if it gets everyone working together with a common cause,” Dockendorff said.