Grower Agrees to Pay $300,000 in Suit Over Workers’ Poor Housing

California Rural Legal Assistance, in what it called a steppingstone toward a better life for all farm workers, on Wednesday announced a $300,000 settlement with a Sonoma County grower that guarantees farm workers on his property the same right to decent, safe and sanitary housing as other California tenants are entitled to.

The money will go to three Latino families who had lived in abject squalor adjoining a verdant vineyard in Geyserville, 70 miles north of here. According to court records, the families lived in shacks where their health and safety were threatened by rat and cockroach infestation, falling roofs, lack of heat, exposed electrical wires and contaminated well water. In addition, several of the tenants contracted serious illnesses including giardia, a ravenous intestinal parasite.

California Rural Legal Assistance Executive Director Jose Padilla said the settlement should serve notice on agricultural “slumlords” that the anti-poverty group will pursue similar cases throughout the state. He said his agency currently has comparable suits pending in Monterey and Tulare counties.

‘Intolerably Squalid’

The three Geyserville farm worker families filed their suit in March, 1984, alleging that vineyard owner Leroy Rasmussen’s one-room shacks, renting for $180 to $220 per month, were “intolerably squalid.” They sued Rasmussen for violating the “implied warranty of habitability,” which provides that a landlord is responsible for maintaining decent, safe and sanitary living conditions at his property. The suit alleged that Rasmussen ignored health and building code regulations and declined to cooperate with state and local agencies seeking to remedy the problems.

The case was scheduled to go to trial this week. But Rasmussen agreed to settle late last week, according to Edie Sussman, the California Rural Legal Assistance lawyer who prepared the suit. Rasmussen could not be reached for comment, and his lawyer declined to return calls.

Although the case does not formally set a precedent because there was no court decision, Padilla said it still could have broad impact on migrant farm workers, many of whom are illegal aliens and would be afraid to go to authorities to protest their plight.

“It gives farmers notice that the legal protections that are there will be applied,” Padilla said. “It’s up to us to educate community workers and migrant farm workers that those protections will be made available to them through our agency or other agencies.”

Word of Victory Spreads

Cristina Briano, a California Rural Legal Assistance community worker, said the agency had already begun to spread the word of the victory.

“This settlement can be used as a steppingstone to equal rights for people still denied the basic right to decent housing,” she said. “The law doesn’t say everyone is entitled to decent housing except farm workers, but that seems to be the way it’s been interpreted--not by court decision but by the acts of growers and other persons who provide housing for farm workers.”

The settlement calls for the immediate payment of between $3,500 to $6,000 to each of the six parents involved in the case, and for payments of $500 per month for the next 14 years for the benefit of the 14 children of the three families.

Each child will receive a lump sum payment of up to $35,000 when he or she turns 18. The settlement was structured in this fashion, Sussman said, in an attempt to bring some stability to the lives of the families. She said that one of the families--Esperanza and Ruben Valencia and their seven children--lived in their station wagon for seven months after leaving the Rasmussen dwellings in July, 1983.

“I am happy because my children will not have to miss their school because we don’t have a house to live in,” Esperanza Valenica said in a statement released by Sussman. The lawyer said all the families are now living in decent rental housing not far from the Rasmussen farm.

Declared a Nuisance

All nine members of the Valencia family lived in a tiny 20-foot-by-15-foot shanty. The unit was one of three that had been subdivided out of a larger structure, all of which had been declared a nuisance by the Sonoma County Building Department in July, 1983.

The Valencias were charged from $180 to $220 a month in rent during their seven months as tenants, and the payments were deducted from their wages.

According to the court documents, the adult tenants--none of whom could read or speak English--were never informed of the amount of wages due them.

In addition to the cash awards to the three families, the settlement also will benefit other tenants on Rasmussen’s property even though they were not plaintiffs in the suit.

Under a court-ordered injunction, Rasmussen is prohibited from collecting any rent for the next six months from the remaining 20 tenants on his property. Sussman said the injunction, granted by a Sonoma County Superior Court judge, will enable those individuals to work through the harvest season and save enough money to move to safer dwellings if they so desire.

The order also provides that after the six-month period, Rasmussen cannot rent any units unless they fully comply with all health and building codes.