Land Under Homeowners Is for Sale : Communities: In the early 1900s, families built on lots rented to them by an oil baron. A charitable trust now owns the property and wants to sell it.

TAFT, Calif. —  Linda Wood stood outside her dilapidated house and sighed.

“As you can see, it’s a wreck,” she said. “Much as I would like to get it back in shape, there is no way I can.”

“In shape” was a long way off. The roof sagged. The paint peeled. Pieces of siding dangled from the wood-frame dwelling. The septic tank needed replacing.

But sprucing up the place was unlikely. Although the house that cost her $7,500 in 1973 is paid for, no bank will loan fix-up money to her--or to any of the 800 families living in the Central California community of South Taft.

Because while the houses are theirs, the land is not.

The 640 acres belong to the Jameson Trust, established by the widow of oil tycoon James W. Jameson, who made his fortune here 80 years ago. And the trust wants to sell.

In 1910, Jameson laid out 1,000 lots, each 25 feet wide and 125 feet deep, in a 17-square-block area of South Taft. He offered them to his employees as home sites, at $3 a month rent for each bare lot. The rents have risen since to $9 a month in 1955 and $30 in 1989.

Many among the 2,135 residents own their houses and are descendants of the original employees.

Harvey Bryant, president of the Taft Chamber of Commerce, warned that if the trust sells the land to a developer and insists that people move their homes off the property, “they’d have to come in with the U.S. Army to force them out. If Mr. Jameson were alive he’d have a heart attack over what’s going on.”

The trust, seeking to divest its real estate holdings, has offered to sell the land to the city for $6.5 million. “Taft is being offered a real bargain,” in trust spokesman Les M. Huhn’s opinion. “The land has an appraised value of $13 million. . . . If Taft doesn’t want it, we will put it on the market and sell it to a developer.”

The city isn’t buying; in fact, it can’t.

Even that bargain price tag “would bankrupt the city,” said Bryant, who has suggested that the trust give the land to the city or to the residents.

But Huhn said the trust has no intention of giving away valuable property.

While the debate goes on, the residents wait, and their aging homes get no younger.

A recent study by the city of Taft found that two-thirds of the homes in the unincorporated South Taft area need major rehabilitation. Most are small frame dwellings, 70 to 80 years old, with a market value from $15,000 to $40,000. A few businesses--a meat market, grocery store, tavern and trailer park--operate there.

There are no sewers, no curbs, no gutters, no sidewalks, no street lights in South Taft. The streets are oil-coated dirt.

“Even if I could get a loan, I would be putting my money on a dead horse,” mused Wood, who is unemployed and lives alone. “Jameson Trust or new owners of the property could force me at any time to move my house off their land.”

The land was bought with Jameson money earned in the oil fields around Taft. Jameson died in 1934 at 74, and his widow, Ida May, established the trust and the Jameson Foundation in 1958. She died in 1963 at 102. They had no heirs.

Each year, the foundation contributes about $1 million to charities, religious groups and scientific research, according to Huhn.

Bryant says the right course for the trust is to give the land to the city, which should in turn give it to the homeowners.

“James Jameson made millions in Taft. I say put the money back where it came from--let the people of South Taft be benefactors, for God’s sake, instead of giving the Jameson money to charities with no connection to this area,” he said. “Then the city could help the homeowners get the badly needed infrastructure and annex South Taft to Taft.”

Margo Arnold, who grew up in South Taft and is vice president of Taft National Bank, recently organized a meeting of homeowners at the Taft Recreation Center. More than 300 South Taft residents turned out to consider their options.

“The people of South Taft are being held hostage by the Jameson Trust,” Arnold said. “With no money available for home improvements or reconstruction, the trust has become a slumlord.”

At 69, Pauline Vetrovec has become known as the “Mayor of South Taft.” Since 1958, she has run the Jameson Trust office in South Taft, where residents pay their land rent. She and her husband live there, too, in the house they bought for $4,000 in 1949.

“I worry about these people,” Vetrovec said. “I have a kinship with them. A lot are older people on limited incomes who have lived here all their lives. Many are widows.”

Vona Collier, 90, is a widow who has indeed lived in a small South Taft cottage almost all her life, and “raised three generations of my family” there.

“I don’t know what’s goin’ on,” she said. “I just hope I can live out my life in this house on this same spot.”