Jul 13, 2010

California Growers Don’t House Their Workers Anymore

By Matt Milkovich
Managing Editor

This is part of an FGN series on migrant labor housing conditions in different states. This story examines the situation in California.

Few growers in California provide housing for their seasonal workers these days. They used to, said Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League, but in the last few decades they shut down or demolished hundreds, maybe even thousands, of the labor housing units on their farms (by “unit,” he meant anything from a five-person house to an 80-person camp).

The state’s regulatory environment became so stifling that the growers just didn’t want to deal with the housing issue anymore. Some would like to provide dwellings for their migrant workers, but the potential liabilities make it a highly unattractive choice right now, said Barry Bedwell, president of the California Grape & Tree Fruit League.

“Given the costs and the hoops that have to be jumped through, most growers don’t consider it a viable option,” he said.
The intent of the state regulations is to protect agricultural workers and make sure they have adequate housing. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the rules became so onerous that growers decided it would be easier to just get out of the housing game altogether, Bedwell said.

“I hope other states can look at California as an example of the unintended consequences of overregulation.”

Cunha gave some examples of what Bedwell meant by “overregulation”: If a screen door was torn, or a lid was off a garbage can, or food was left on a table, it was considered a violation of state rules, and the grower who owned the housing could get penalized for it.

Even without all the penalties, housing was a costly business. A grower could spend more than $15,000 improving a unit that housed 20 people, and at the end of the season, after the workers cleared out, half the stuff in the unit would be missing, he said.

“We’ve recommended to many of our growers: Don’t put housing on your farms,” Cunha said. “You’re asking for trouble.”

'Hodgepodge’
If they don’t stay on the farm anymore, where do California’s migrant workers and their families live during harvest?

Thousands live in state-run housing centers, but as for the rest, they rent space wherever it’s available: houses, apartments, hotel rooms, mobile homes, etc. The quality of such accommodations varies, Bedwell said.

He described the current situation as a “hodgepodge,” inadequate to the needs of growers and workers.

The state’s Migrant Family Housing Centers offer some relief. There are 25 such centers in California (one of them is under construction), most of them located in the Central Valley, said Jennifer Sweeney, public information officer for California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

HCD’s Office of Migrant Services (OMS) oversees the centers, which house, in total, about 1,800 families. Each center has anywhere from 41 to 100 single-family housing units, and most of the centers have day care services. OMS officials are responsible for inspecting the centers and handling any complaints, according to Sweeney.

A solution?
Cunha envisions a scenario that might solve the state’s migrant housing problems: Let cities take over the construction and management of migrant housing.

A city has greater resources than a grower does, and it – and the businesses within its limits – could benefit from the extra revenue more residents would bring. It would be better for the workers and their families, too. They’d get the protections and comforts of living in an actual city, rather than living miles away in an isolated labor camp, where they’d be more vulnerable to criminal activity such as extortion, prostitution and drugs, he said.

Cunha has talked to mayors from different cities, and he thinks they’re open to the idea of building facilities for farm workers. If a city does risk building such housing, however, it needs a guarantee that workers are going to show up year after year to use it. That would require the passage of the AgJOBS bill, which requires eligible migrant workers to stay in agriculture for three to five years, he said.