Housing Relief Finally Hitting Home for Some Farm Workers

Juana Plaza would like to forget the seemingly endless hours she spent waiting behind dozens of other farm workers just to get a shower.

Dirty and tired from long, hot days spent picking, pruning or planting in the San Joaquin Valley, Plaza shared a shower and a bathroom with about 100 other farm workers living in 20 shacks at a Cutler labor camp.

“When you have these dreams, people tell you you’re going to come [to America] and live better. I never imagined I’d live under these conditions,” Plaza said through a Spanish interpreter while taking a break from making dinner.

With the state making its biggest commitment to housing farm workers this year, Plaza and farm worker advocates in the Central Valley hope camps like this one will become a distant memory.

One of the worst things about the unheated two-room clapboard hut that Plaza lived in with her father, brother and a male cousin was the lack of privacy. She could never close the door and be alone, not even to sleep.

But despite being crammed into a space no larger than a typical living room, Plaza and her family didn’t usually complain. They were generally better off than their neighbors, many of whom packed twice as many people into their tiny homes.

Before the shacks at the camp finally were boarded up last year--after being condemned for five years--Plaza and her family paid $400 a month to live there, about a third of their collective wages.

Now Plaza’s family pays the same rent on one of four new two-bedroom apartments her landlord built just across the yard from their old shack. But theirs is a rare success story in an area stricken with poverty for generations.

Farm worker housing has been a problem in the Central Valley since the land was given over to the plow, with little political capital or cash spent to find a solution.

This year, after more than 20 years of subsistence funding, the state’s farm worker housing budget ballooned from $3.5 million to $46.5 million.

The money was approved by Gov. Gray Davis, taking advantage of the state’s $12-billion surplus this year, and will be distributed as grants to housing agencies and nonprofit organizations.

Rural housing advocates see the money as simply a good first step.

“The additional money is desperately needed, but probably 10 times as much is needed to really solve the problem,” said Ilene Jacobs, a lawyer for California Rural Legal Assistance.

There are at least 500,000 farm workers in California, perhaps twice that. One-quarter to one-half of them have no permanent home or are sleeping in overcrowded, shabby conditions similar to or worse than those at the camp in Cutler, according to statistics from the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

“The problem hasn’t changed. It’s getting worse, if anything,” Jacobs said.

One of the biggest problems, as she sees it, is the lack of support from the state’s nearly $30-billion-a-year agricultural industry for housing projects.

“On one hand, the industry wants to have a ready work force that’s cheap and competent. On the other hand, they don’t want to accept responsibility for ensuring that the work force gets decent housing, has safe transportation and is paid a living wage,” Jacobs said.

Most farmers, who have been struggling the last couple of years with sinking commodity prices and rising production costs, say the last things they need are the bureaucratic headaches and public relations nightmares associated with being landlords to a vast and constantly moving work force.

Still, if the regulations were streamlined and if farmers were protected against frivolous lawsuits from advocacy groups, growers would be more open to giving up land for housing projects or even becoming landlords themselves, said Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League.

“We had a lot of guys tearing houses out because of that issue. They’re tired of being sued,” Cunha said.

So for now, the chore of supplying the bulk of farm worker housing falls on city and county housing agencies and nonprofit organizations in California’s heartland.

What’s needed is political and financial support from farmers, said Peter Carey, executive director of Self Help Enterprises in Visalia.

Founded in 1965, Self Help is the nation’s oldest “build-it-yourself” housing development organization. It was created to improve farm workers’ living conditions by offering low-interest loans, grants and volunteer farm worker construction crews who help build their own and their neighbors’ houses.

“Farmers have to realize that . . . not only is it the right thing to do, but [supporting farm worker housing projects] is in their best interest,” Carey said.

More money and land are needed, but perhaps most important, farmers need to help housing advocates overcome local opposition, advocates said.

“Every time there is a farm worker housing project proposed, neighbors come out of the woodwork to oppose it,” Jacobs said.

It’s a vexing problem for farmers as well, Cunha said.

“We’ve got to have cooperation on that front. Farmers would love to have housing in those areas that are closer to the jobs,” he said.

One project both sides agree on is a 60-unit neighborhood development in Cutler, just down the road from the old labor camp. It’s being built by Self Help, Catholic Charities and other groups and is scheduled to open in the spring. It will have a community center, a health clinic, a park and a basketball court.

“If you build a project in a central location to serve seven or eight farmers, the seasonal logistical problems could be taken care of. They can have laundry facilities, health services and security,” Cunha said.