Larkin is an educator and lives in San Diego County.
Every year, the winter rain brings the desert bloom to the Anza-Borrego Desert, as the California poppies explode onto the sandstone landscape. Yellow blankets of evening primrose cover the hills as an abundance of plant species come to life in crisp, bright colors that make you wonder why the desert hides its beauty most of the year. Visitors to Anza-Borrego come in groves to witness the super bloom, yet probably few ever take notice of a place called Butterfield Ranch.
Butterfield Ranch is a collection of manufactured homes and trailers south of Shelter Valley in the Anza-Borrego Desert; a nearly two-hour drive from San Diego. It’s a place visitors pass by each year, unaware their weekend excursion is also the home for people struggling just to survive.
Butterfield isn't actually a ranch — it was once an RV park intended for weekend visitors, until it was purchased by Matt Philbin and used as a place for long-term residence. As the housing crisis and economic disparity reached new heights in San Diego County, more and more people in need of housing moved to the isolated area. The ranch soon had far too many residents and far too few resources as the living conditions worsened rapidly.
From May 2022 through January 2023, the community was living under a boil water notice . According to the State Water Resources Control Board, the water supply became contaminated with E. coli and residents began to get sick. The owner was put on notice and was fined, but for over half a year people went without clean water. The man some praised for getting people off the street was unable to fix the situation he had created. Families with young children had to boil water in the sweltering desert heat and wait for it to cool. Water to drink, bathe, brush their teeth, wash their dog, clean their dishes. It’s hard to imagine what life was like for the elderly or the sick, whose lives were already fragile enough. It’s hard to imagine living in an area devoid of resources where one has to wait for government agencies to figure out whose job it was to fix the water. It’s hard to imagine the owner didn’t have the resources to provide more relief during one of the worst heat waves in decades as residents went months with no clean water.
Butterfield Ranch is the hidden poverty of San Diego County; a place occupied by some of the most vulnerable residents yet hidden from San Diego behind the mountains and tucked deep in the desert landscape.
Residents of Butterfield Ranch survived not because of a benevolent owner, but because good people saw what was happening and stepped in to help. Local nonprofit organizations like Julian Pathways and Backcountry Communities Thriving, along with countless other programs like Feeding San Diego, provided water, food and a variety of resources. I heard once, “It’s in the shelter of each other the people live.” That couldn’t be truer for those who helped the people of Butterfield. Those who took the initiative to help while people in power or those with the means to do more stood by and waited for something to happen.
As our state tackles what to do with our homeless population, perhaps we should take notice of Butterfield Ranch. Perhaps we should replicate the nonprofits that do great work, while realizing that public funds intended to help people could end up lining the pockets of those who simply put them in another untenable situation.
Butterfield Ranch is a place no one seems to know about or bother to slow down to take notice. While hundreds of people will drive by this spring, it’s a place that’s not going anywhere. There are other places like Butterfield Ranch popping up all over our state. As our economic disparity grows, it seems those on the margins are being pushed deep into the desert. A place where the flowers bloom in the spring and fade by summer, while the people who live in Butterfield Ranch try to survive as long as they can.
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune .
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