Housing Aid Sought for Fieldworkers

A farm-worker advocacy group has asked San Diego officials to increase funding for a city program to upgrade dozens of dilapidated structures housing impoverished field hands in the agriculture-rich San Pasqual Valley and Lake Hodges area.

California Rural Legal Assistance has also requested that officials take tough steps to increase participation in the program, which offers housing rehabilitation loans to farmers leasing city-owned land in the region.

No farmers have taken advantage of $100,000 now available through the month-old loan program, and housing conditions for the immigrant field hands remain among the worst in the state, said Claudia Smith, regional counsel for the advocacy group.

In an April 4 letter to Mayor Maureen O’Connor, Smith described badly deteriorated houses, trailers and other dwellings that most of the field hands rent from their employers.

One farm worker, his wife and five children pay $200 a month for a trailer with a gaping hole in the bathroom floor and walls that have rusted through in places.

San Diego housing officials said they have had little time to evaluate Smith’s requests and argued that the loan program, which was approved by the city Housing Commission in early March, needs to be given a chance.

“We’ve started with this initial step,” said Mary Jo Riley, a Housing Commission spokeswoman. “The program is a month old. We hope to work with it in the next six months and then evaluate it.”

Discussed Program

Housing officials have discussed the program with three farmers, with two declining to participate. The third is receiving “technical assistance” from the city to get permits to perform repairs using his own money, Riley said.

Authorities plan to approach other growers and discuss the rehabilitation effort, she said. The program features loans of up to $50,000 at 5.5% that must be matched by private funds.

One housing official suggested some of the farmers may not be able to afford the loans. Rehabilitation of just four of the 37 structures being considered for upgrading was estimated by city officials at $125,000.

Smith, however, argued that a tougher approach is needed. Although the loan program is an important step, the pot of available money is too small and the voluntary nature of the effort has proven ineffective, Smith said in her letter to O’Connor.

“No (farmer) is required to take advantage of the opportunity in order to preserve his lease, no matter how substandard the structures in which his employee/tenants are housed,” Smith wrote. “Simply put, the carrot is there, but the stick is missing. . . . To rely on the (farmer’s) good-will, as the program now does, is to continue postponing real solutions.”

With about 97% of the land in the more than 10,000-acre region owned by the city and leased to farmers, San Diego officials could wield significant leverage over the growers to perform needed housing repairs, Smith said.

She suggested the city consider performing the required maintenance to bring the trailers and structures up to snuff, then charge the farmers for the repairs. Such a step is permitted under the existing lease setup.

Another alternative might be to declare that a farmer has forfeited his lease on the property if he fails to upgrade the dwellings. A stipulation in the leases requires the farmers to comply with all laws, and “clearly, from the city’s own inspection records, they do not” regarding housing regulations, Smith said.

Noting that the San Pasqual Valley and Lake Hodges area have the highest birth rate of any census tract in San Diego, Smith suggested that improving conditions for the field hands and their families “would seem a prime project for the Year of the Child.”