They Also Serve Who Sit and Wait : Wandering Couple Claims a Home--for Others

CHULA VISTA —  Sitting atop a desolate hill in South Bay, Thelma and Bill Ponsford realized that they had found their niche in life and a sure-fire retirement income.

They were destined to become “line sitters.”

The semi-lucrative avocation, which the elderly couple chanced into by word of mouth, involves camping out for one, two or three weeks at a construction site, awaiting the day when a developer’s tract of new housing comes up for grabs.

Do the Ponsfords want to buy a home in Chula Vista’s new EastLake community?

No way! The Ponsfords have been trailering folks, mechanized hoboes, since 1977 and are happy with their itinerant status. They and their well-traveled 31-foot travel trailer are sitting in a line for Phase 2 of EastLake Shores’ single-family homes on behalf of two young couples who hope to become property owners in the South Bay’s first planned community.

Bill Ponsford, retired after a career that ranged from munitions work in San Diego during World War II to auto-body shop owner in the Great Northwest, agrees that the job he and Thelma now have is decidedly the easiest.

All they do is what they have done daily since 1977--spend a leisurely day in the sun, watch a Western sunset and then slip off to sleep to a serenade of coyotes in the nearby hills and valleys.

The Ponsfords have been camped on the dusty construction site about eight miles east of Interstate 5 since April 21 and will remain until May 10, when the Rene Beauchamps and the Rick Mays will return to claim their first and third spots in the raffle for the 21-home tract near the lake.

Because of their ages (in the 60s) and their good natures, the Ponsfords evolved into “den parents” for the arriving home buyers. The pair pledged to maintain a certain amount of calm and to help enforce the developer’s requirement that all of the aspiring home buyers be in line--or hire a proxy to be there--21 of the 24 hours each day.

The Ponsfords, buffered by retirement from daily deadlines, enjoy the laid-back life of line sitting and earn $25 a day during their 20-day stint.

As first-timers in this real-estate roulette, the Ponsfords are a bit lax in their discipline, calling only one meeting of the waiting home buyers during their first 10-day stint and depending on good will and human nature to gain compliance to the rules of fair play.

The Seattle couple has put out the welcome mat for other, later arrivals in line. A sheltering awning, half a dozen chairs and a table composed of available lumber and building block are available to others at the Ponsford place and serve as a gathering spot for the waiting families.

“It gets a little crowded when the weather heats up,” Thelma Ponsford admits.

Their charges, Nos. 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 in line, include a grandmother who takes care of her grandchildren, an infant and

toddler of the working parents who want to own an EastLake home; a couple of triathletes in training for the run-swim-bike event; a couple with four children, and another line sitter. Another couple, unable to obtain or afford a line sitter, swaps 12-hour shifts in a bright red sports car.

Fortunately, he works nights, and she works days. He spends the daytime hours trying to catch a few Z’s in the cramped, hot interior of the tiny car.

One couple, who both hold day jobs, hires a daytime-only line sitter, while another couple toughs it out with their two kids in a van.

Why would any sane person spend two or three weeks of his life on a barren mesa, surrounded by noisy construction equipment and cut off from the amenities of lights, running water, television and telephones, to buy a home that won’t be built for months?

And why here, in this isolated area off Otay Lakes Road, seven miles from the Mexican border and twice as far from downtown San Diego?

“Beats me,” said Bill Ponsford, who hasn’t had a permanent address for nearly a decade.

“And I don’t know how they can afford the payments if they do get one of these houses.”

“These houses” are Fieldstone Co. Classics--one- and two-story, three- and four-bedroom beauties with underground utilities, garage-door openers, cable TV outlets and the use of a man-made lake freshly stocked with catchable fish, a park, a swimming pool, tennis courts and spa.

All this for just $110,990 to $129,990, unless prices go up before the May 10 sale.

“We’ve heard them talking about it,” Thelma Ponsford said. “Payments of $1,000 to $1,500 a month. How can anyone afford it these days?”

Susan Brenner, hostess at the Fieldstone sales office, explained that the would-be homeowners who have lined up for the EastLake Shores’ housing are not only moxie but smart. They know a bargain--$10,000 or more under going prices elsewhere in the county--and appreciate the fact that the new development is much closer to San Diego than are the North County and East County developments now on the market, she said.

Bill and Thelma Ponsford know little about the economics of their present occupation, but they know that sooner or later, some of the patient home buyers are going to turn aggressive, realizing that if they “bump” others from lower-numbered spots, they advance their own chances of getting the lot and the model house they desire.

Bumping can only be done by agreement of the waiting members that a violator has broken the rules of the game by, for instance, overstaying his or her three-hour daily escape period from the monotony of waiting.

“Velva (Viejo, Fieldstone sales manager) told us that it was up to all of us to police this line,” Thelma Ponsford said. “She also pointed out that we had better get along with each other because, before long, we’d be each other’s neighbors for a long time.”

Although the Ponsfords won’t be permanent residents of EastLake (they plan to take off for a trailering trip to Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and wherever after their line-sitting job is up), they pass Viejo’s sage advice on to the people who will.

EastLake Phase I housing, which went on the block April 19, also attracted a 25-family waiting line, selling out on the opening day of that new Fieldstone development.

The Fieldstone products were the only ones with waiting buyers camping out for first choice of the EastLake properties, Brenner said, “and it brought them together.”

Before the first concrete slab in Phase I has been poured, home buyers who became acquainted in the earlier waiting line now have started publication of a community newsletter, Brenner said.

Construction superintendent Mike Moore confirmed that the new homeowners have plenty of time to cement their friendships, because building their as-yet unstarted homes will take about 100 days, start to finish.

By then Thelma and Bill Ponsford are likely to be halfway across the country, heading where their whims take them.

“But,” Thelma Ponsford said, “we’ll probably be back to sit in line again. It was fun, and we have met lots of intersting people.”

Besides, she pointed out, how else could a couple of old fogies earn $25 a day for doing what comes naturally--sitting in the sun doing nothing much.