Councilman Goes to Work on Day Laborer Complaints

For 15 years, laborers, most of them immigrants, seeking a day’s work on a construction site or landscaping job have congregated at Fairview Road and Crescent Drive.

For nearly as long, area residents have been trying--to no avail--to force them off the block, calling the group a safety hazard and a public nuisance. Now, however, the City Council is listening and one councilman has vowed to find another place for the laborers.

But the men, most of them in their 20s and 30s and almost all of them Latino, say they are doing nothing more than waiting for work. They say they haven’t caused any problems and don’t understand why neighbors have made them a target.

“Maybe they don’t like people who are Latino hanging around here,” said one of the laborers, who identified himself only as Miguel. “We don’t bother any of these people. The police come by every day and there have never been any problems.”

Advocates for workers and Latinos said the laborers should not be forced off the street until they have another place to go.

“It’s like everyone wants their labor but nobody wants to see them,” said Barbara Macri-Ortiz, senior attorney at Channel Counties Legal Services--an advocacy group for low-income workers. “Residents are uncomfortable because people who do not look like them are out on the street, although they are as hard-working and honest as any other group of people.”

“It’s not going to go away,” said Hank Lacayo, president of Oxnard-based El Concilio. “You can’t just sweep them under the rug.”

Councilman Andy Fox, after hearing complaints from neighbors at a City Council meeting Tuesday night, said he did not want to ban the workers from the city but objected to the location of the daily gathering.

“This is completely unacceptable for a residential neighborhood. We need to get it out,” Fox said Wednesday. After seeing the gathering, Fox called a staff meeting to begin studying an alternative. “How we get it out is really the trick. It is a top priority now.”

People who live near where the laborers congregate said they don’t think they are being unreasonable. The problem has existed for years, they said, and they want it resolved.

“We’re not saying they’re bad people, it just doesn’t belong in a residential neighborhood,” said Dennis Robb, whose mother has lived on Crescent Drive since the early 1950s.

Robb said he is most concerned about traffic hazards caused when trucks and vans stop to pick up the workers. “It’s an accident waiting to happen.”

From 6 a.m. to noon, at least six days a week, workers gather on the corner, flagging down trucks that will take them for a day of manual labor that usually pays between $8 and $9 an hour. If the prospective employer won’t pay that much, the men may pass up the job and wait for a better one to come along.

While the men wait, residents said, they toss trash in the streets, urinate in the bushes and harass women passing by.

“We have a fear of walking through this group of men,” said Ruth Pruett, who has lived on the block for 50 years. “It’s not right that we have to contend with this situation.”

Matters have worsened since 1991, Pruett said, when residents sent a petition to the city asking for help in “restoring our neighborhood.”

Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Cmdr. Keith Parks, Thousand Oaks’ police chief, said his officers patrol the area regularly but have issued few citations because they must see crimes or code violations taking place. Neighbors may consider standing on the side of a public road a quality-of-life issue, he said, but it’s not a crime.

In the staff meeting Fox called Wednesday, he said officials developed a tentative plan that calls for gathering information on the history of the corner meeting spot, contacting local advocacy groups for ideas, investigating legal options and exploring sites outside residential areas where contractors and residents could pick up day laborers.

One resident suggested placing benches and a portable restroom on land next to the city’s soon-to-be-built Community Transportation Center.

But city officials, who said they want to help the 40 or so laborers, added they don’t want Thousand Oaks to become a regional day labor hub.

This debate has happened before in Ventura County. From Ojai to Moorpark, city officials have struggled for years to balance the needs of job-hunting laborers with those of residents and merchants. Although half a dozen cities in Los Angeles and Orange counties have hiring centers for day workers, Ventura County has none.

Cities in Ventura County have differed on how they handle the issue. Moorpark has aggressively looked for space and money to build a job center after years of complaints about workers congregating at the Tipsy Fox convenience store downtown, said Assistant City Manager Hugh Riley.

Moorpark wants to join other agencies to create a one-stop social services center that would include a place for day workers, Riley said, but he couldn’t say when the city would have a concrete plan.

Agoura Hills, just across the county line, is one of a dozen small Southern California cities that ban laborers from soliciting work. Labor activists challenged the ordinance in court several years ago, City Manager Dave Adams said, but a state appellate court ruled in Agoura Hills’ favor.

Earlier this month, however, a federal judge overturned a similar measure in Los Angeles County, saying the law was unconstitutional.

Until about three years ago when it failed, Agoura Hills ran a phone bank to connect workers and employees. Adams said the city doesn’t want to build a job center because city leaders don’t want day laborers to gather anywhere in the city.

Ojai Councilman Steve Olsen said residents have complained about laborers gathering outside the city’s continuation high school, but he doesn’t consider it a problem.

“I have pretty much dismissed them as racist comments,” he said.

Back on the corner of Fairview and Crescent, 23-year-old Carlos Linares said were it not for this labor pool, he wouldn’t have achieved his dream of owning a landscaping business.

The Guatemalan immigrant started soliciting work on the Thousand Oaks corner three years ago. He learned the trade and saved enough money to buy his own equipment. He started his own landscaping business and now swings by the labor pool when he needs an extra hand.

“They’re not doing anything wrong--they’re just waiting for work,” Linares said. “It’s the only place they can go.”