Foundation to Spend $31 Million on Farm Worker Housing, Health Care

The Great Central Valley, with its 15% unemployment rates and some of the poorest cities in the state, is a region of urgent needs. For years, one of the more pressing concerns has been the shortage of housing for the hundreds of thousands of farm workers who pick the nation’s richest crops here.

To help meet the need, a private foundation is giving $31 million to build housing and health care facilities for farm workers, both the migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border each spring and those who have planted more permanent roots in California.

The money--$20 million in zero-interest loans and $11 million in grants--comes from the California Endowment foundation and is believed to be the largest award of its kind to assist farm workers.

“The shortage of housing and health care for agricultural workers is one of the real shames of California, and this money represents a significant opportunity to impact lives,” said William French of the Rural Community Assistance Corp. The Sacramento-based nonprofit agency won the award after submitting a grant proposal.

Each May in the San Joaquin Valley, in anticipation of the fruit and vegetable harvests, farmers and labor contractors begin a mad dash to locate housing for the single men and women and families arriving from Mexico. Often 10 and 12 workers sleep side-by-side in squalid apartments built for two.

University of California studies estimate that the housing shortage for migrant farm workers has grown to nearly 100,000 units statewide. Labor camps, once a common feature of the rural landscape, are becoming increasingly scarce, French said.

More than 4,000 labor camps operated by farmers--some of them clean and well-run and others riddled with safety and health violations--have closed over the past three decades, mostly because of increased government regulation.

At the same time, French said, the federal programs that fund farm worker housing have been severely cut. The proposed budgets for farm worker housing this year total $45 million--an allocation meant to serve the entire nation.

French said the bulk of the $31-million award from California Endowment will be used to build rental units and houses that are affordable for farm workers, whose wages average less than $10,000 a year.

A smaller portion of the money will build health clinics and pay health care workers. The health care needs are every bit as great as those for housing, French said. Farm workers are three times more likely than the average person to die of respiratory diseases such as emphysema, studies show.

The first house and first clinic could be finished by the spring of 2000.

“We’re going to put the money out in three different shots over the next three years, and the first shot will be this summer,” French said. “Buying the land and putting up the houses is not cheap. We’re hoping to build a total of 1,000 units spread out over small communities in the San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere.”

The housing needs of farm workers have changed in recent years as more families have stopped migrating across the border and planted roots in small towns, according to university studies. An estimated two-thirds of the state’s 1.2 million farm workers now live in California year-round, transforming rural communities such as McFarland, Parlier and Earlimart, which now rank among the nation’s poorest.

Because of this trend, French said, most of the houses will be built for families. The developer, a Visalia-based organization called Self-Help Enterprises, has built 4,600 single-family dwellings and 500 rental units since 1965.

“More than 70% of our homes are still occupied by the original families, many of them involved in farm labor,” said Peter Carey, executive director of Self-Help Enterprises. “It creates stability and it creates community, and that’s really what we strive for.

“The great thing about this infusion of capital is the flexibility. They’re going to allow us to address housing and attendant health needs through several different ways.”

California Endowment was established in 1996 when Blue Cross of California converted from a nonprofit to a for-profit corporation and state law required that $900 million of its assets be set aside for philanthropy. The endowment, which now totals $2.4 billion, is available to fund innovative health care projects throughout the state.