Wall of Naysayers

It should cause little wonder that Sacramento balked at the Oceanside Community Development Department’s proposal for using migrant housing funds (“Restrictions Keep Migrant Housing in Limbo,” Sept. 4). As originally conceived, that proposal was virtually a “grower giveaway.” City Housing Director Richard Goodman, who loudly decries everyone else’s naivete, is seemingly oblivious of the very sad history of privately run farm-labor camps in this county. Almost without exception, those camps are badly substandard and badly overcrowded. Not infrequently, workers are overcharged--if not gouged.

Moreover, Mr. Goodman apparently rejects the fact that such arrangements are fraught with potential for exploitation. Time and again, we have encountered farm-worker families afraid to complain about even serious habitability problems (for example, raw sewage seepage outside their front doors) because they stand to lose not only roofs over their heads but their livelihoods.

Conversely, they are all too often reluctant to complain about labor abuses (for example, failure to pay minimum wage) because retaliation is likely to take the form of discharge and eviction.

Assembly Bill 617, as amended, does allow for mobile homes on grower owned/leased land, and for single men. However, it does not compromise the need to ensure that farm-worker housing underwritten with taxpayers’ funds is safe, decent and affordable, and that applicant families aren’t discriminated against.

Neither does it compromise the need to ensure that the landlord-tenant relationship is not characterized by intimidation.

Agricultural employers do have a significant role to play in efforts to shelter their workers, but Oceanside should consider providing other incentives for agribusiness to house its workers, such as permit fee waivers.

The almost solid wall of naysayers encountered in this county is unprecedented in our long (nearly 25 years) and wide (from El Centro to Marysville) experience trying to promote the development of farm-worker housing.

First, housing officials from the county on down said that San Diego was not sufficiently agricultural to be considered favorably by federal and state farm-worker housing programs. That straw man was knocked down, but now the inability to find even scattered, publicly owned sites has been interposed.

Would that the energy expended on finding 10 reasons why such shelter can’t be provided here were used to devise five ways of “making it happen”--as it has in 14 other farm counties. If farm-worker housing can be provided in Palm Springs (on city-donated land), surely it could in, say, the San Pasqual Valley (90% owned by the city of San Diego) or Fallbrook (a hard-core agricultural area).

CLAUDIA E. SMITH

Regional Counsel

California Rural Legal Assistance