Low-Income Workers Finally Feel at Home

Francisco Carranza and his family had spent six years living in a cramped, drafty garage with room for only one bed.

Whenever his 7-year-old daughter asked when they would move into a real house, Carranza said, his answer was always the same -- “Soon, soon” -- even though he didn’t think it would happen.

A little over a week ago, though, his daughter’s wish came true. The Carranzas moved into a brand-new home in Riverside County’s Coachella Valley built in part with their own sweat.

“It wasn’t until they handed me the keys that I really believed it was ours,” the 36-year-old gardener said in Spanish, his eyes gleaming.

Carranza and his wife, Maria, 30, devoted nearly a year of their lives toiling in the heat to build their house and the houses of 11 other families on the block -- part of a self-help program for low-income families coordinated by the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition.

Their labor -- a minimum of 40 hours per week to build their house and those of their neighbors -- served as their down payment, amounting to about 10% of the value of their home. The Carranzas will pay the rest through a low-interest loan provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They will owe a total of about $150,000, less than half the price of homes a block away.

Now settled into their new home, the Carranzas have beat the odds in this hot housing market, but the rising costs of land and construction materials are making it harder for many families to qualify for low-cost-housing programs that were within their reach only a few years ago.

Under the scorching sun of the Coachella Valley, a rush for land is rapidly transforming an area once dominated by vineyards of table grapes into a checkerboard of homes and golf courses. Property is being scooped up by developers at a dizzying pace, boosting land prices and making even the smallest of spaces unaffordable for the people who work the fields or mow the lawns of wealthy homeowners.

In 2005, more than 30,000 single-family home building permits were issued in Riverside County, making it one of the leaders in new-home construction, according to the California Building Industry Assn.

Nonprofits such as the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition, which receives federal, state and private funds, are scurrying to find new government and private grants to continue to provide low-cost housing options, but despite their efforts, income requirements for families continue to rise every year. Currently, the coalition assists families classified as “low income” or “very low income,” ranging from about $18,000 to $56,000 per year for a family of four.

Francisco and Maria Carranza make about $2,400 a month: he as a gardener, she as a factory worker.

In some cases, gaps in the coalition’s funding are filled by private subsidies or government programs, such as the state-funded Joe Serna Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant, which gives grants to families agricultural workers, said Nadia Villagran, special projects manager at the housing coalition.

Although the coalition has had many success stories, building more than 1,000 homes through the self-help program since 1987, there are many who will not qualify for a variety of reasons such as poor credit or lack of a steady income or an income that is a sliver too high.

Even for those who qualify, the wait to participate in the self-help program can be long. As of mid-February, 6,784 families were on the waiting list.

One of the difficult realities of living in the area, with tony Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage just to the north, is seeing housing units cropping up left and right -- just not ones within most families’ reach, Carranza said.

“You see these giant golf courses and mansions around here and wonder, couldn’t they just leave a little land for us?” he said.

The coalition has tried to do just that, buying up plots and coordinating the construction of self-help developments in cities around the valley.

Although all of the residents in the complexes are low-income, they have pride in their neighborhood and take good care of their property, said Emilia Mojica, pre-construction manager for the coalition’s self-help program.

“People put their sweat into that home, so they’re not going to let it go as easily as someone who puts a down payment and just buys it,” Mojica said. “They’re investing a lot in their homes.”

The families contribute around two-thirds of the labor when the homes are built, working on tasks such as roofing, framing and completing most of the interior work; licensed contractors put in air conditioning, heating, plumbing, dry wall and stucco.

On the edge of Indio, a nearby city, wrinkled, dying grapevines have been left to wither before the bulldozer takes over are a sign of the change stretching into the valley. Robert Melkesian, a grower who had long been in the region, has finally sold his land to developers, said Larry Edge, manager of the California Desert Grape Administrative Committee.

It’s a lure that some vineyard owners are finding attractive, said grower Mike Bozick, owner of Richard Bagdasarian Inc.

“The developers have been knocking on the doors for the last two years,” said Bozick, who owns about 4,000 acres of farmland.

Despite feverish construction, only about 17% of households in the county could afford to buy a median-priced home in late 2005, according to the California Assn. of Realtors. Last year, the median price for a home in Riverside County was $380,000, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

“With all of the developments going up and the speculators coming in, there’s a huge demand for affordable housing in this area,” said John Mealey, executive director of the Coachella Valley coalition. “And people’s incomes are not going up.”

Bertha Rodriguez, housing manager for the Rancho Housing Alliance, another organization committed to providing low-cost housing in the valley, has also found that for many families, being able to afford a house has become a miserable game of catch-up. Five years ago, families needed an income of $15,000 to qualify for a house in the program; today that number is $25,000.

The Rancho Housing Alliance provides ready-built houses to low-income families, receiving grants from a variety of sources. The alliance, too, has a waiting list of more than 1,000 families.

Wiping the sweat from his forehead as he prepared to install a sprinkler system on his front lawn, Jose Casillas, 29, and his wife, Maria Sabina, 26, worked on putting the finishing touches on their new home in Coachella.

The couple tried for several years to get a loan, said Maria Sabina Casillas, but it wasn’t until her husband left the fields and got a steady job that they qualified for the self-help program.

Although she still occasionally picks grapes nearby, her husband now works as a deliveryman for a door company.

These days, when Jose Casillas goes to deliver a door, he pauses and asks the owners about their home decor.

“I want to get as many ideas as possible,” he said in Spanish, gazing into his house. “Now that it’s finally ours, we can make it a home.”