A Step Closer to Home : Panel Backs Controversial Plan to Build Housing for Workers

The triumphant “mayor” of McGonigle Canyon received the press last week outside his home, a shack with a padlock on the makeshift door.

Heriberto Rodriguez and the governing committee of a migrant squatters camp in the canyon had taken their fight for better housing to a decidedly more formal government body--the San Diego Planning Commission.

And they had won.

“It was an important victory,” said Rodriguez, a 50-year-old farm worker from rural Guerrero, Mexico. “We still have some big steps ahead, but we are happy with the result.”

Rodriguez sat in a discarded office chair in a clearing at the sprawling north San Diego camp in Rancho Penasquitos, where hundreds of migrant workers live.

Dogs barked and fought among the trees. Smoke rose from cooking fires. Hot-air balloons floated overhead in the dusk, sightseers looking down on the entrenched poverty that exists among the county’s most expensive communities.

The strange tableau sums up an ubiquitous problem throughout north San Diego and North County: illegal migrant worker camps that are potential fire, health and safety hazards. Under a proposed ordinance approved by the Planning Commission Feb. 13, the city would allow construction of temporary, up-to-code housing to replace such camps.

City officials and migrant advocates say they have come up with a significant, innovative method for improving migrant living conditions and alleviating the concerns of homeowners about the squalor next door.

“We are trying to come to grips with reality,” said City Planner Bob Collier. “Those communities that have tried to tear down these camps have not had much success. . . . What we are proposing is that if someone wants to build housing, these are the standards, the locations, the criteria. For the first time, the city will have a chance to review something that has been going on for 20 years.”

The plan involves the city’s Future Urbanizing Area, thousands of acres of agriculturally zoned land on the northern fringe of the city where migrant laborers work and find shelter.

The temporary camps would not be permitted in large sections of the urban reserve because of danger to environmentally sensitive areas or flood control zones. And, full environmental impact reviews would be required in some cases.

Squatter’s camps are always a treacherous political battleground; the proposed amendment to the city municipal code moves next to the City Council, where it is expected to encounter opposition from homeowners’ groups.

Some homeowners in the Rancho Penasquitos, Rancho Bernardo and Carmel Valley areas support the city plan, which grew out of a task force headed by Councilwoman Abbie Wolfsheimer.

Others fear it will only draw more poor people to the canyons. They are concerned that legalized temporary housing could develop into low-income projects with inevitable crime, crowding and other social problems.

“I understand the objective is to improve their living conditions, which we agree with,” said Bob Chow of the Crestmont Homeowners Assn. “But it will not work. What is proposed will not achieve what they want,” said Chow, a college professor who lives a mile east of McGonigle Canyon.

Chow pointed out that about 40% of the city’s migrants, whose total numbers are estimated up to 3,000 in the peak summer months, work in agriculture. The rest find day labor jobs such as construction and gardening.

A more fundamental solution would be to pressure agricultural employers to pay decent wages so their workers can live in conventional housing, Chow said. He said homeowners should refrain from hiring day laborers because that encourages proliferation of the camps, a population that he believes will grow if legal camps are built, despite the city’s intention of gradually removing illegal camps.

“Homeowners are part of the problem,” Chow said.

The Planning Commission voted 4 to 1 in favor of the plan after making some adjustments in response to points raised by homeowners. For example, language was added requiring landscaping as a visual buffer for neighboring developments.

One of the key players behind the city proposal is Esperanza International, a nonprofit group that has improved conditions at the McGonigle Canyon settlement and is trying to raise $2 million to build village-style temporary housing for its 500 residents.

Esperanza Managing Director Stephen Fehrer said the Planning Commission decision demonstrates the city’s “political will” to tackle the politically sensitive issue. He said worker housing would not be built near existing homes, contrary to fears of some opponents.

“We are not putting this in the back yard of anyone,” he said. “It will be in the center of undeveloped land, and miles from major residential areas.”

City planners hope other nonprofit groups will follow Esperanza’s lead and propose housing options to replace the camps--proposals that would have to undergo exhaustive review before being granted conditional use permits.

Esperanza envisions clusters of mobile, lightweight housing units with social services, cooperative stores and security patrols. Residents would pay $3 daily rent, Fehrer said. Although families would be permitted, he said camps are intended only as temporary for migrant workers, not a permanent housing project.

Chow is not reassured.

“It’s logical to assume that the next step will be women and children,” he said. “How is it going to work? Can anybody who wants to pay $3 a day for housing get it? How will those decisions be made?”

Those questions may recur Wednesday at an advisory hearing of the council’s Transportation and Land Use Committee. The committee will then forward the proposed amendment, possibly with a recommendation, to the full council for consideration March 30.

Another committee will be preparing to speak to the City Council; a committee made up of immigrants from Mexico and Central America who live in cardboard houses.

Rodriguez said he and the other camp leaders hope the Planning Commission vote will help reduce the distance between the migrant workers and their hilltop neighbors. He acknowledges that the camps have problems, and believes the city has found the way to address them.

“It’s very simple,” he said. “We need the support of the authorities. These are things we cannot correct only among ourselves.”