Housing Complex for Migrants Unveiled

A major North County grower Thursday unveiled a 328-bed housing complex for field hands near Oceanside, raising hopes for a small portion of the thousands of homeless immigrant laborers who camp in the brush throughout the region.

The project, built by Harry Singh & Sons, a family-run tomato and strawberry farming business that has been in the area for more than half a century, is considered one of the largest and most modern farm-worker housing complexes in California. Workers who stay there will pay $16.50 a week for bunk beds in a communal sleeping room, and an additional $44.80 a week for three hot meals a day.

However, although farm-worker advocates applauded the project, they also noted that its effect is limited--only Singh employees may stay there and no undocumented immigrants or family members are allowed. They also said that many other initiatives are needed before the area even begins to address its severe lack of housing for immigrant laborers.

“I can’t help being somewhat ambivalent about employer-provided housing,” said Claudia Smith, regional counsel for California Rural Legal Aid in Oceanside. She noted that such facilities do provide shelter, but they also have a “strong potential” for exploitation: Workers are suddenly dependent on their employers for both their jobs and their shelter.

“If you fuss about even substantial housing problems, you stand to lose not only your home but also your job,” noted Smith, citing a history of abuse associated with company-owned farm worker housing throughout California. “And, if you complain about substantial violations in the workplace, you stand to lose not only your job but also your home.”

Nonetheless, Smith and others welcomed any effort that would bring even limited improvement to the Third World-like living conditions that are the norm for many homeless field hands in the San Diego area. The Singh project is the county’s largest farm-worker housing development, authorities said.

Singh Farms embarked on the $2-million project almost three years ago, fearing that the government’s 1986 amnesty program--which offered legal residence to many formerly undocumented farm laborers--would prompt many workers to abandon the fields for less strenuous and better-paying jobs in factories, restaurants and other industries.

In fact, farm laborers have not left the fields en masse. Actually, workers and their advocates say there is a huge surplus of workers, reducing job opportunities and leading to a high proportion of unemployed and underemployed field hands.

However, farm-worker housing remains in short supply throughout California, whose multibillion-dollar agricultural industry is largely dependent on immigrant labor, mostly from Mexico. Most earn the state minimum of $4.25 an hour.

For various reasons, the housing crunch is particularly acute in San Diego County, where high rents leave thousands of field hands with no choice but to camp in canyons, river bottoms, amid the brush and beneath the groves. Many rely on open fires for cooking and heating.

“We all live in el monte (the brush),” Lorenzo Lopez Gil, a 54-year-old field hand, explained as he and two other colleagues waited for their paychecks Thursday outside the modern Singh offices in Oceanside. Their crude camp is perhaps a quarter mile from the two mustard-colored dormitories of the new housing project.

Lopez, like many of his colleagues, is a Mixtec Indian from Mexico’s impoverished Oaxaca state. He says he has worked as a field hand on farms from California to Oregon. Nowhere else, he says, has he seen such primitive conditions.

“San Diego is the worst,” Lopez said, his well-traveled colleagues nodding in assent. “In Oregon, the patrones (employers) give you a place to sleep, there is a gas stove, a refrigerator. All services are available.”

Asked if he would consider moving into the new Singh facility, Lopez and his colleagues said they doubted it.

“Too expensive,” said Victor Hernandez, a 31-year-old father of five who is also from Oaxaca state.

But other workers have said they welcomed the accommodation, where prices are within state guidelines--and certainly much cheaper than competitive rents. Singh Brothers officials say it expects to have room for all of its workers at the site, which is slated to open this week. No one will be required to stay, Singh officials say.

The 25,000-square-foot housing project is situated in the hills of the San Luis Rey River valley, in rural Bonsall. It is surrounded by tilled land.

The project consists of two two-story garden-apartment-style residential buildings and a storage building. Each structure contains 41 sleeping rooms, which include eight beds apiece, a kitchen, dining room, recreation area, bathrooms and laundry area. Outside, officials say, there will be a soccer field, and courts for basketball and volleyball. The facility has its own satellite dish for reception on a 10-foot-wide television screen that is in the main, cafeteria-style dining room.

The project was built despite vocal opposition from some area residents, who feared an encroachment on their rural lifestyle.