The ‘Invisibles’

Many immigrants in Ventura County are farmworkers who pick strawberries, often from 7 a.m to 4 p.m. daily for six days a week. Pesticides and long hours bent over can cause numerous health problems among farmworkers. (Photo by Falon Opsahl)

THE ‘INVISIBLES’

Those who put food on the nation’s table lack affordable, adequate living conditions;
nonprofits try to help

 

Low wages and high-living expenses in Ventura County cause many of the people who plant, prune and harvest the nation’s food to live in substandard conditions. Families often live together in a garage, shed or single bedroom. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

A steadily growing number of immigrants in California, stagnating low wages, few employment options and unstable work environments have made immigrant farmworker living conditions increasingly concerning and dangerous for thousands of farmworkers throughout the state.
With a state economy largely dependent on agriculture, farmworkers are necessary to California as a whole, especially in counties that are agriculturally based, such as Ventura County in Southern California.

“We have an economy that actually depends a lot on our agriculture,” House Farm Workers! Program Coordinator Alondra Serna said. “It’s a $2 billion a year industry due to all the agricultural workers involved. Without them, it would really negatively impact our community.”

Map of Ventura County

Yet farmworkers in Ventura made on average of about $20,000 a year in 2014, according to the California Employment Development Department. This is problematic in a county where a $50,000 to $60,000 salary is necessary to rent an apartment for 30 percent of a family’s income — the amount a family should be paying for housing to be considered “affordable,” according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition Out of Reach 2014 report. While there are some government programs to provide low-income housing, the burden often falls on nonprofits to fill in the gaps, like plugging holes in a sinking ship.

Due to the limited amount of affordable housing in Ventura County, most farmworker immigrant families end up living “in garages, or are doubling, tripling up in single-family homes,” Serna said. “We’re not talking about single workers, though that’s an issue too; we’re talking about family units that are going to our schools, that are part of this community, and as a result, it really impacts children’s lives.”

Housing is one of the most difficult social goods to obtain, but it is necessary for survival, said David K. Androff, assistant professor at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University and the head researcher for the 2011 “U.S. immigration policy and immigrant children’s well-being” study.

“We all need shelter, but it is really expensive,” Androff said. “Many immigrants are renters, and can be vulnerable to exploitative landlords. Our social policy in general, and also specifically in regard to immigrants, is not very helpful to making sure that people have safe and affordable housing.”

Micop Community Organizer Juvenal Solano said farmworkers aren’t asking for much.

“The only thing we want is that people show respect to those who put food on the table,” he said, his words translated from Spanish.


THE REASONS FOR THE PROBLEM

Immigration is a fascinating issue because it can be framed in so many different ways. Immigration is an economic issue, a race/ethnicity issue, a national security issue, a cultural issue, a language issue, etc. It’s also one of the few issues that sometimes cuts across partisan lines.

Benjamin R. Knoll
Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa

A Growing Number of Immigrants

Some studies have noted an increase in the farmworker population over the last decade, which has increased the overall economic output of the regions in which they work, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) indicate that 54 percent of all farmworkers in 2011-2012 were not not legally able to work in the country. This is slightly down from 55 percent in 1999-2001, but way up from 15 percent in 1989-1991. The Labor department no longer publishes formal reports and only recently began releasing the raw data, according to Farmworker Justice’s Immigration and Labor Resources. The 2011-2012 data is the most recent available.

The Department of Labor conducts interviews throughout the year to monitor the terms and conditions of agricultural employment and assess the conditions of farmworkers.

Low Wages

Housing is also an issue for the majority of farmworkers since the agricultural industry is seasonal, and many earn salaries well below the poverty line, which is $24,250 for a family of four, according to the 2015 Poverty Guidelines. Farm owners frequently keep farmworkers’ wages low to increase profits by paying them piecemeal, or based on how much they harvest rather than by the hour. This increases productivity but prevents most workers from achieving the standard $8 minimum per hour.

“It’s easy to blame farmers or employers, but we as consumers have a significant role to play because we enjoy the low-cost product,” said E. Roberta “Bobbi” Ryder, president and CEO for the National Center for Farmworker Health.

“We are in large part responsible for the continual dependence on cheap labor. We buy the products from these companies and they’re making a lot of money.” Workers are demonstrating, Ryder said. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, for example, has been pressing for one penny more per pound for tomatoes from restaurants like Burger King. That one extra penny would move farmworkers who pick hundreds of pounds of tomatoes per day into a living wage.

“It would probably cost us more like $44 a year as consumers if we didn’t support those restaurants that buy tomatoes from farms that don’t pay a living wage,” Ryder said. “By demonstrating with our wallets, we have the ability to influence the farmers to pay them a living wage. Most consumers don’t stop to think about that: their role in perpetuating a substandard living for three million people in this country doing farm labor.”

In Ventura County especially, these low wages are coupled with high rent, exacerbating the lack of financial flexibility and mobility in farmworker families.

“It’s not easy. It’s particularly hard for farmworkers,” Ellen Brokaw, president of Brokaw Ranch Company and chair of House Farm Workers!, said.  “When cities are restricted and can’t expand, housing prices go up, and farmworkers mostly need to live in the cities because there are big restrictions about building anything on farmland, even for farmworkers. They really struggle in this very high-priced housing economy … So what do they do? They crowd several families to a house. They live in garages, sheds.”

Like many ranches, farms and nurseries in Ventura County, Brokaw Ranch Company and Brokaw’s other company, Brokaw Nurseries, employs farmworkers by permanently hiring some and by hiring others temporarily through farm labor contractors, Brokaw said. This can be problematic for the farmworkers, since under this system, the farmworkers are considered self-employed, which means they receive no benefits or protection, Pepperdine University Professor of Hispanic Studies George Carlsen said. It also makes them more vulnerable, especially if they are undocumented workers, which make up about 30 percent of the foreign-born population, or 11 million people, said Emily Ryo, professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She spearheaded a 2013 study called “Deciding to Cross:  Norms and Economics of Unauthorized Migration,” published by the American Sociological Review.

“We are not responsible for workers under the farm labor contractors,” Brokaw said. “If they work for a farm labor contractor and they don’t have papers, and that farm labor contractor is competing with other contractors, then the wages are almost always close to minimum wage with no benefits … It is not a good system.”

Micop Community Organizer Juvenal Solano said he came to the United States when he was 14. He came because there was no way to make a living in his hometown in Oaxaca, Mexico because the land is dry and there are no crops.

However, in Ventura County, wages were so low, Solano said he worked very hard for very little, especially because he lives in a county where the average two-bedroom apartment is $1,479 per month, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“It is always minimum wage,” Solano said, his words translated from Spanish. “But everything is very expensive … It is very difficult because the work doesn’t pay well. It is always the minimum, the minimum, the minimum, so the entire family has to work so that they can pay for food and clothes, too. It is hard work.”

“They’re not taking any jobs that anybody else wants … There needs to be a pathway to, if not citizenship, legal residency.”

John Krist, CEO of the nonprofit Farm Bureau, discusses the economic and legal implications of immigrants’ presence in Ventura County. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

Ryder said employers taking advantage of cheap labor, particularly immigrants, is nothing new: “We have a long history of depending on cheap labor in this country. If you look at who’s building houses, cleaning hotels or working at restaurants it’s a lot of immigrants.”

However, bad economic times can have a negative impact on the grower as well.

“Certainly not all growers are evil, but growers are really stretched economically and the only elasticity they have is their labor, so they pay as little and spend as little to maintain the labor force,” said Sara Quandt, researcher and professor of epidemiology and prevention at Wake Forest University. “The growers are at the mercy of people buying their products, grocery stores and fast food restaurants, so if you want to improve conditions for farmworkers you have to start at the top of the food chain. And you may have to pay more, which will be passed on to the grower and to the farmworkers.”

Sometimes there’s a misassumption that all farmers take advantage of farmworkers, Ryder said.

“There are small family farms where many farmers almost live in conditions like the farmworkers … People pay a lot of taxes, wages, provide housing, and may financially not be a whole lot better off than the farmworkers who work for them,” Ryder said. “You’ll find that the small family farms tend to truly appreciate the workers they have and work hard to keep them able.”

The spectrum goes from small to big, multi-level farms in the agricultural industry where there’s major distance between the person who owns the farm and the workers themselves, Ryder said.

“When farms are owned by big corporations there’s all the middlemen in between that are using that labor source,” Ryder said. “I don’t think anybody will actually set out to abuse people unless it’s some crew leaders who stand to some things that are unethical or illegal, but the pressures of bringing in a crop often are very high and that’s based in part on weather, economy and who plants what this year.”

Ryder said the price of corn from one year impacts the conditions for next year.

“I think the ones who abuse people are the exception to the rule, very few,” she said.

Few Employment Options and Unstable Work Environments

This is a country of immigrants, so we want the same rights … We are here because we also contribute to the economy: We pay rent, we buy food, we pay taxes … We want to contribute to this great country, but we want the same rights

Juvenal Solano
Micop Community Organizer
(translated from Spanish)

The main motivation for people to immigrate from Latin America to the United States is economic,  Ryo said.

Ryo has performed several qualitative research studies about immigrants. In her most recent study, “Deciding to Cross: Norms and Economics of Unauthorized Migration,” Ryo found that many immigrants consider themselves “moral and law abiding individuals who respect borders,” but obligations to their families make violating the law a legitimate option, Ryo said.

Ryo’s survey results revealed that people are three times more likely to migrate if they know people who have migrated or if they believe it’s difficult to find a job in Mexico, and they are two times more likely to migrate if they believe disobeying the law is justified or if they believe it is OK to violate the law if they come here to work.

Ryo said they take great pride in their work here.

“It is the substantive nature of the work that they take pride in; it is the substantive nature that is legal and honorable,” she said.

Yet when they come to the U.S., immigrants often face the same problems of limited employment options and instability — except they earn just enough to send back to their families.

Poverty has a significant effect on where farmworkers live. In Ventura County, most immigrants have to live close to their work, so they end up living in garages, sheds or crowding two to five families into a house made for one.

Brokaw, of Brokaw Ranch Company, said this is an important issue to everyone — not just the people living in conditions unsuitable for humans.

“The fallback for that is huge, not just for the people in the family, but for the community,” Brokaw said. “… This is not just an agricultural issue because most of (these farmworkers) here now are here permanently … It is really important to make sure everyone (in a community) has a safe, affordable, decent house.”

“Everybody benefits from a robust, viable agricultural industry, and without a secure, stable labor force, that all goes away.”

John Krist, CEO of the nonprofit Farm Bureau, discusses why the lives of farmworkers should matter to the community. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

Angelica Amezcua (Link her name to my narrative on her), 27, lived in a single bedroom with her five other family members from age 11 when she immigrated to the United States to when she graduated from Cal State Northridge. Only then was her family able to move into an affordable housing unit with Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation. Amezcua’s father is a farmworker, and her mother is a former farmworker who now works as a crossguard.

“It is important that we consider farmworkers as a valuable people in our society,” Amezcua said. “I think that it’s important that we humanize them … They’re also human … But they’re still paid the least, they’re in bad working conditions, they’re not provided health insurance. I think that we need to change that and give them the value they deserve and recognize their hard work. How many people eat from those crops? Farmworkers are essential.”

THE SOLUTIONS

Over the course of the last decade, governmental agencies and nonprofit groups have become more interested in the improvement of farmworker housing conditions.

“Housing has always been a problem. Even if you have a license, a problem is less housing is available since many farmers don’t want to go to that extent to provide housing, and farmworkers who don’t have housing will get together with others and find housing with them in extremely crowded conditions, live out of a car, under a bridge, which is an extremely awkward situation,” Quandt, the Wake Forest researcher, said.

Quandt also distinguished between immigrants who are seasonal and those who live in the same place year round.

“I must distinguish those two things,” she said. “The reason I say that is because migrant housing is regulated, meaning there are federal regulations on what this housing has to consist of and the standards it must meet. Housing for non-migrant workers doesn’t fall under federal regulations, only local housing regulations.”

“They want to have their cake and eat it too, but ignore the baker.”

Mayor of Santa Paula John Procter explains some of the obstacles to building affordable housing in Ventura County. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

Government Aid

The most significant problem is we can’t pass any new (laws) because of dysfunctions in Congress. I think it’s time for reform; almost any reform would do better than what we have now.

Roberta “Bobbi” Ryder
President & CEO of the
National Center for Farmworker Health

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service, the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development all provide housing services to farmworkers and can be contacted with farmworker housing questions. Some of these programs include: the Farm Labor Housing Loans and Grants Program, the National Farmworker Jobs Housing Assistance Program and the Family Self-Sufficiency Program.

These departments are in charge of administering certain laws to protect farmworkers, two of which are the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, administered and enforced by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, requires farm labor contractors, agricultural employers and agricultural associations to disclose and comply with the terms and conditions of employment, post worker protection information at the worksite, pay each worker his or her earned wages, ensure that any housing or transportation provided complies with federal and state regulations, and maintain payroll records. However, there are exemptions, namely independent contractors, who are not considered employers.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act, administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and enforced by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, provides federal safety and health standards for field sanitation and temporary agricultural labor camps. States may enforce their own standards, but must meet the minimum federal requirements.

“If the immigration system doesn’t connect to our economic system … you see a great amount of undocumented immigration.”

Pepperdine University Professor of Hispanic Studies George Carlsen explains how current immigration laws cause our economy to depend on undocumented immigrants. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

The welfare system can also be a huge aid to documented immigrants. In Ventura County, 25,817 immigrants — 60 percent legal permanent residents and 40 percent naturalized citizens — have been on welfare in the past five years, according to the County of Ventura Human Services Agency welfare data. Of these, 85 percent receive aid through CalFresh, also known as food stamps, and 15 percent received aid through CalWORKs, which is a welfare program that gives short or long-term cash aid and services to families who need help paying for living costs, food and other necessities. County of Ventura Human Services Agency Senior Manager Jennie Pittman wrote in an email that the distribution of CalFresh and CalWORKs clients across the cities in Ventura County has remained constant over the years.

Welfare Distribution in Ventura County by Immigrant Status

A majority of welfare recipients in Ventura County are U.S.-born citizens. Of the recipients who are immigrants, it is unknown how many families made up of undocumented parents and documented children are surviving only from the welfare the children receive.

Immigrant Welfare Recipients in Ventura County

Of the immigrants in Ventura County who receive welfare, 60 percent are legal permanent residents and 40 percent are naturalized citizens. Undocumented immigrants, some of the most vulnerable and impoverished members of the community, cannot receive welfare.

Poverty and Welfare in Ventura County by City

The cities of Ventura County have a large range of poverty and welfare need, according to Ventura County’s Monthly Demographic Profile. Ojai and Fillmore are smaller cities and therefore do not have up-to-date information for poverty or median earnings. People in unincorporated towns are unaccounted for here.

Click here for more visualizations of welfare data in Ventura County.

The average age of immigrant welfare recipients in Ventura County was 46. Though 95 percent of recipients are over the age of 18, some 1,173 immigrant minors have received welfare in the past five years. Only non-citizens with permanent resident status who have been here for five years or who were admitted for humanitarian reasons may qualify for welfare. Undocumented individuals and non-citizens who are in the U.S. temporarily — including students and tourists — are not eligible to receive welfare, Pittman wrote.

“Eligible household members can get CalFresh benefits even if other members of the household are not eligible,” Pittman wrote.

This means children who were born in the U.S. or who have been given permanent residence under the Immigration and Nationality Act may receive food stamps and share with the rest of their possibly undocumented family. The Immigration and Nationality Act, created in 1952, has been amended many times, but it has remained the center of immigration law in the U.S., according to the INA website.

“When a parent is not eligible for assistance, the family receives a grant amount that reflects only the eligible family members,” Pittman wrote. “For example, if an undocumented mother and father have two children who are eligible for assistance, the family receives a grant that reflects a family size of two individuals, not four individuals. CalFresh and CalWORKs grants are intended to be supplemental in nature, so the dollar figures do not reflect the full costs of buying food for a month, paying rent for a month, etc. So if four-person family receives a level of monetary assistance that is intended to supplement the resources of a two-person family, it’s a matter of opinion about whether the parents are ‘benefitting’ from their children’s benefits.”

Pittman wrote that the California Food Assistance Program (CFAP) is intended to aid legal permanent residents who have not yet been in the United States for five years.

Government aid directly for immigrant housing has generally helped children the most. President Barack Obama increased the aid in 2014 in response to what he called an “urgent humanitarian situation” in a letter to Congress, when there was an abnormally large influx of children, ages 13 to 17, entering the United States from countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to escape poverty and violence.

Most immigrant adults in California end up in one of the 24 temporary migrant camps, said Ann López, founder and director of the nonprofit Center for Farmworker Families, but they can only stay from May 1 to Nov. 30 each year.

“While they’re in the camps, it’s wonderful,” López said. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s adequate.”

However, once the season is over, migrants have to either find other work or go back to their home countries. For those who are undocumented, the latter is often not an option since it would be difficult to come back to the U.S. again, López said. This means that the workers often have to move to follow the harvest, which disrupts children’s education and can cause health problems due to stress.

“They are out there working as hard as they can, and at the end of the day, who can they complain to if their crew chief withholds payment to them?”

Pepperdine University Professor of Hispanic Studies George Carlsen talks about how employers exploit farmworkers, especially seasonal workers. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

Corporations

Brokaw Ranch Company and Brokaw Nursery

Map of Brokaw Ranch Company

Brokaw Ranch Company has nine to 10 permanent workers in Ventura and Monterey Counties for year-round necessities on their 200 acres of lemons and avocados, President Ellen Brokaw said. Brokaw Nursery employs almost 50 people.

However, like many Ventura County agricultural outlets, Brokaw said they hire temporary workers through farm labor contractors, which makes the farmworkers — instead of the labor contractors or the nursery — responsible for their own healthcare and other benefits, since they are considered self-employed.

Brokaw said the system is “not good” because it leaves employers unaccountable for their workers. While it is out of the nursery’s control whether the contracted labor is documented — in fact, Brokaw said most of them are undocumented — she said Brokaw Ranch Company does everything it can to avoid hiring undocumented permanent employees. The contracted employees are paid piece rate, which means they are paid per number of bins of lemons picked or per number of trees pruned, Brokaw wrote in an email.

Brokaw wrote the companies’ permanent, year-round employees, who work about 50 hours per week, are paid anywhere from $10.25 an hour for new employees to $16.40 an hour for the orchard irrigator and a 35-year employee. She wrote there are also annual bonuses from $500 to $4,000 and benefits including vacations, holidays, sick leave, health insurance and a retirement plan, which take up about 22 percent of payroll.

Like most farms in the county, Brokaw Ranch Company does not offer employee housing due to the expenses and limited amount of land in Ventura, but as chair of House Farm Workers!, Brokaw and her business are open advocates for getting more affordable farmworker housing built, which requires approval from the public and government officials.

Brokaw moderated the “From Harvest to Home” Ventura County Farm Worker Housing Summit on March 20, 2015, which 150 people attended, including farmers, members of the public and elected officials. At the end of the event, the attendees committed to building 2,375 affordable homes for Ventura County farmworkers over the next decade.

brokaw_plaque
President of Brokaw Ranch Company Ellen Brokaw is an advocate for affordable housing for farmworkers in the Ventura County area. She works with nonprofits, including the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation, to offer adequate living conditions to low-income families. (Photo by Falon Opsahl)

 

Limoneira

Map of Limoneira

Mary Maranville, founder and executive director of Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture, guides tours at Limoneira. The company grows several types of citrus and avocados, but the main export is lemons.

Limoneira, which was the primary sponsor of the “From Harvest to Home” summit, provides 50 percent of the United States’ lemon supply, Maranville said, and 25 percent of its produce is shipped internationally to 18 different countries, primarily Korea and China. With lemons in season year-round, Limoneira processes 500,000 pounds of lemons every day.

Maranville said 50 percent of Limoneira’s 400 workers live in farmworker housing, with a total of 183 homes on the property in Ventura County and 195 in California total. While the homes were built in 1919, they appear to be in great shape.

Maranville said employees are the company’s “No. 1 asset.”

“It’s a community within a community … Many families have been working here for generations,” she said.

Brokaw said Limoneira offers some of the most expansive farmworker employee housing in the county.

Director of Sustainability and Food Safety Tomas Gonzalez said he has been working at Limoneira for 42 years, one of many “40-plussers” who work at the company. Gonzalez said he worked his way up to being director from picking oranges when he was a teenager. He gained work experience within the company and took advantage of the scholarships Limoneira offers to its employees that can cover up to two years of higher education.

“There are just a few companies like Limoneira that offer jobs, housing at a discount, benefits — so that’s the reason (the workers) stay, that’s the reason I’ve been here,” Gonzalez said. “I’ve gotten job offers with better pay, but there’s nothing like home.”

With support from the public, these companies are able to make sustainable profits while paying their workers enough to maintain a higher standard of living.

Nonprofit Aid

I think most of the people who live in the cities really like having agriculture and like looking at it and driving by it, but the people who make it possible are pretty invisible, so we try to put a face on the farmworker and how the farmworker lives.

Ellen Brokaw
President of Brokaw Ranch Company and Chair of House Farm Workers!

Through advocacy and action, nonprofits in Ventura County attempt to change the standard for farmworkers’ living conditions.

“Agricultural jobs tend to be at the low end of the wage scale, and Ventura County is one of the most expensive places in the nation to live.”

John Krist, CEO of the nonprofit Farm Bureau, discusses the goal of the organization to advocate for farmworkers and the agricultural industry. Video by Brandi Saldierna.

House Farm Workers!

House Farm Workers! is a volunteer-driven nonprofit that started in 2004 and primarily focuses on advocacy and raising public awareness by hosting conferences and seminars, educating the public and government officials, making and showing videos, testifying at city council meetings and supporting other nonprofits and corporations who aim to build affordable housing, Program Coordinator Alondra Serna said.

fhth_trifold
House Farm Workers! is an advocacy group that works with nonprofits and farmers to construct affordable housing for low-income farmworker families in affluent Ventura County. The nonprofit hosted a summit March 20, 2015 to raise awareness about farmworker living conditions and raise funds and support for more affordable housing. (Photo by Falon Opsahl)

City committees — including city officials, concerned citizens and people who care about immigrant rights — meet monthly to discuss immigrant living conditions and plan how to raise awareness and make tangible changes in the community, Serna said. House Farm Workers! also hosts fundraisers, including bus tours that take people to poor housing and then affordable housing to see the difference.

“Most people wouldn’t know the housing is affordable because affordable housing has been done beautifully,” Serna said.

“You would never know that there was an affordable housing unit right next door to you … They’re beautiful facilities.”

Moorpark City Councilmember David Pollock explains what affordable housing is like and why it is important. Video by Brandi Saldierna.

A decade ago, no one was discussing, let alone acting on this issue, Serna said, but since then, nonprofits like House Farm Workers!, in collaboration with corporations like the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation, have built 500 housing units for farmworkers in Ventura County.

“We’ve seen affordable housing developers in the area have been able to put up really great houses, and we’ve seen family units trajectories transform,” Serna said. “Children are going to universities. They’ve really transformed their lives.”

She said the affordable housing is so well-done, most people would never imagine it was subsidized.

cedc_affordable_housing
Affordable housing at the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation’s Azahar Place makes it possible for low-income farmworkers to afford rent. Many of these farmworker families would otherwise live in a mobile home or rent one bedroom in a single-family home. (Photo by Falon Opsahl)

Brokaw acknowledged the progress, but she said there is still a long way to go.

“There is a lot of resistance in communities to any low-income housing,” Brokaw said. “In the past 10 years, we’ve helped build 500 units, which is nice, except when you realize there are 20,000 farmworkers in Ventura County.”

In addition to the March summit, House Farm Workers! will host the fifth annual From Field to Fork Fundraiser at the Walnut Grove at Tierra Rejada Ranch on July 23, 2015. The summit and the fundraiser are intended to raise further awareness and money to the ongoing problem of substandard living conditions among immigrant families.

At the summit in March, community members, government officials, advocates with nonprofits and farm owners heard about the causes of the problems, the extent of the problem and what is being done to solve the problem. They also watched a new documentary called, “From Harvest to Home,” which was an update on their 2004 “Mi Casa es Su Casa” documentary. Both films show the state of immigrant living conditions in Ventura County as of 2015 and 2004, respectively. Serna said they made “From Harvest to Home” so that viewers would be getting the most up-to-date information as possible.

fhth_poster
House Farm Workers! hosted the “From Harvest to Home” Farm Worker Housing Summit on March 20, 2015 to advocate for affordable housing to help improve immigrant living conditions. (Photo by Falon Opsahl)

 

Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation

There is a lot of resistance in communities to any low-income housing. In the past 10 years, we’ve helped build 500 units, which is nice, except when you realize there are 20,000 farmworkers in Ventura County.

Ellen Brokaw
President of Brokaw Ranch Company and Chair of House Farm Workers!

Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation is a private nonprofit, founded in 1981, that focuses on community development by building homes for low-income families and renting them at affordable rates, Communications Director Jennifer Gordon said.

First created to provide better living conditions to farmworkers when organizers acquired real estate with dilapidated housing that they renovated into affordable housing, CEDC now has 23 separate communities of affordable housing in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties for different low-income groups, including the elderly and people with mental or physical disabilities, Gordon said.

“Over time, CEDC developed its own capacity with its own real estate and construction divisions to buy pieces of land through various sources of funding for the purpose of building affordable housing for low-income people,” Gordon said.

CEDC now owns a total of 1,063 units, which house one to eight people, depending on the unit, Gordon said. Some of the affordable homes are studio apartments, others are four-bedroom homes.

Affordable housing means that one’s rent or mortgage costs no more than 30 percent of a family’s annual income, and families — including thousands of immigrant farmworkers — who pay more are considered cost burdened and often cannot afford other necessities like food, clothing, transportation and medical care. In order to qualify for the CEDC homes, the families must earn less than 50 percent of Ventura County’s median income, which is $86,100 for a family of four, according to the CEDC website.

To finance the developments, the nonprofit must look to a variety of sources.

“Affordable home development is known sometimes as needing lasagna financing because it needs several layers of financing to get these places built,” Gordon said. “Each property is different depending on the types of homes, who it will serve and what city or county it’s in. There’s no one single recipe for any of these lasagna finance projects.”

Income sources include grants from a city, federal funds from the USDA if the development will be in a rural area, private banks who want to invest, and private funds from individual investors who believe in CEDC’s mission.

cedc_playground
The Azahar Place development with the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation provides children with a safe place to play. While the property for the affordable housing units is better than the alternatives for many farmworker families, the real estate is directly next to a freeway. (Photo by Falon Opsahl)

Gordon said she strongly believes in CEDC’s mission to provide affordable housing and quality living conditions to low-income families.

“The mission is what drove me here and what keeps me here,” she said. “It fills your heart, and it fills your soul, and it fills your mind … It’s a tremendously fulfilling job and place to be.”

However, Gordon said it is a difficult job: There is a constant need for resources and several hoops through which the organization must jump to build affordable housing.

“It can take 15 years from when they buy (a piece of real estate) to when they build on property,” due to a lack of community support and the need to get all the required permits, she said. “There are a lot of forces that work against affordable housing. A lot of people don’t understand it and don’t understand why it’s important.”

“When you erect affordable housing like that, it improves the way people are able to use transportation.”

Moorpark City Councilmember David Pollock discusses the challenges of obtaining funding and one of the main sources of and reasons for funding. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

But CEDC’s job does not end when the developments are constructed. Gordon said CEDC also has a homeownership center, where CEDC representatives help low-income individuals and families understand their finances, build their credit and prepare to purchase a home.

CEDC’s community building division also provides services “to assist the people living there with tools for leadership and tools to get involved in their community to better themselves,” Gordon said.

It was this organization that gave Angelica Amezcua’s family a home at the CEDC Fillmore Central Station Apartments. Amezcua (Link her name to my narrative on her), who is preparing to begin her doctorate program at Arizona State University in the fall, said she values that CEDC does not just focus on the affordable housing aspect.

“One of the things I really like about Cabrillo is that they’re really not only strong about providing affordable housing, but they’re really strong about promoting higher education among their residents,” she said.

“It’s in our collective interest to make sure that they’re living in safe, sanitary conditions.”

Moorpark City Councilmember David Pollock explains the need for everyone to take care of fellow members of the community and why it can’t be left up to market forces. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

The Center for Farmworker Families

The Center for Farmworker Families promotes education among immigrant farmworkers in the U.S. and their families in Mexico, supports the financial and nutritional well-being of families in Mexico and California, and advocates for workers rights and awareness of farmworkers’ difficulties,” according to the Center for Farmworker Families’ website.

“It’s an underground culture of near slaves, and no one talks about it,” Center for Farmworker Families Founder and Director Ann López said. “No one should be shocked that this is happening — it’s happening all across the state.”

Farmworker Justice

Farmworker Justice is a national nonprofit organization that helps empower farmworkers to improve their living and working conditions, immigration status, health, safety and access to labor unions by ending discrimination, demanding enforcement of laws, promoting higher wages and better working conditions and pursuing immigration reform, according to the Farmworker Justice website.

Migrant Health Policy Analyst Alexis Guild said Farmworker Justice works with other groups across the country, United Farm Workers and other labor unions to continually try to advance immigration reform, worker rights, healthcare and the H2-A program, which allows agricultural employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary positions. They also help catalog abuses and ensure growers are held accountable to H2-A regulations.

“The majority of farmworkers are undocumented,” Guild said, “not that housing requires an ID, but it’s easier to take advantage of workers who lack documentation because they’re less likely to speak up about poor conditions.”

“Often, these affordable houses are being built with federal money, which puts a lot of restrictions on our families (Mixtecos) to be able to qualify.”

Executive Director of Micop Arcenio Lopez acknowledges the benefits of affordable housing and explains some of its limitations for the Mixteco community. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

Guild explained how there’s fear on the part of the worker for speaking up and advocating for themselves because they’re fearful the employer or landlord could retaliate by firing or reporting them to immigration, resulting in deportation.

“That pervasive fear really prevents farmworkers from having working and living conditions that they’re entitled to because they know they’re in a position of power and it’s pretty unlikely that the workers will speak up or report violations to federal authorities,” Guild said. “Farmworker legal services are amazing and provide training for workers, go out to camps and inform them of their rights. They sometimes work with others in the community to raise the voice of farmworkers and really advocate on the local level and sometimes the state.”

Micop and United Farm Workers

“We are a pre-Columbian culture. We have our own language, our own culture, our own way of living, beliefs, traditions.”

Executive Director of Micop Arcenio Lopez discusses the goal and importance of Micop as an organization to support the needs of the Mixteco population. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

MiCop is another prominent group in the Ventura County area, which focuses on outreach specifically to Mixtecos, an indigenous group of Mexicans from Oaxaca and Guerrero, who number at around 20,000, Solano said. While the nonprofit does not directly address living conditions, it aims to inform workers of their rights, teach them about safety, establish community and provide healthcare and education.

Map of Oaxaca

Map of Guerrero

“Just believe in social justice, just believe in equity and equality, human rights.”

Executive Director of Micop Arcenio Lopez explains the need for justice for an alienated group of people. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

“There’s big and huge awareness now about who we are as an indigenous people here, that we are the ones there in the backyard getting the food on the tables.”

Executive Director of Micop Arcenio Lopez elaborates on the Mixteco culture and the role of the indigenous group in the United States. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

Since he arrived in the United States in 2001, Solano said he worked his way up from picking strawberries from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day, to working for the United Farm Workers, to helping other Mixtecos by joining the nonprofit.

Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers of America in 1962, making it the nation’s first successful and largest union of farmworkers, according to the UFW website.

With UFW’s backing, lawmakers approved AB 2676, the Farm Worker Safety Act, in 2012, which makes it a misdemeanor for employers to not provide water and shade to laborers in high heat and allows farmworkers to sue employers who fail to comply.

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A poster in the Micop office in Ventura County says, “The more you learn, the more you want to teach. The more you teach, the more you want to learn.” (Photo by Falon Opsahl)

At a MiCop gathering on Jan. 31, fliers and pamphlets written in Spanish littered the ground, informing Mixtecs of their rights under the Farm Worker Safety Act: They have a right to drink water and rest when they need to throughout the day to avoid falling ill from heat exhaustion. They have a right to sue their employers. They have a right to demand shade.

“Promotoras means community outreach workers … and then they go to reach out for their communities and provide them with information, so that’s the motto that we started with in 2001.”

Executive Director of Micop Arcenio Lopez discusses how Micop formed and has developed over the years. (Video by Brandi Saldierna)

 

 

 

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A sign in the Micop office in Ventura County says, “Proudly Oaxacans: Among individuals like among nations, respecting the rights of foreigners is peace.” (Photo by Falon Opsahl)

Other papers encouraged them to stand up for themselves if their landlords or employers took advantage of them and their families. While English-speaking, documented immigrants have this as an option, undocumented workers often don’t assert their rights in fear of deportation. Among Mixtecos, who often don’t even speak Spanish but their own unique language, human rights violations are all the more common, Solano said.

The National Center for Farmworker Health

The National Center for Farmworker Health is dedicated to improving the health status of farmworker families by providing information services and products to a network of more than 500 migrant health center service sites in the United States as well as organizations, universities, researchers, and individuals involved in farmworker health, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health’s website.

While they don’t specifically focus on housing, Ryder has firsthand experience with farmworker housing. For example, she built housing 35 years ago that has been maintained.

“It takes a coalition to want to do it, and most people don’t understand how those things happen, and they don’t understand what the forces are to make it happen, and it’s community intent,” Ryder said.

Tough economic times play a vital role in many people thinking that farmworkers don’t belong here or they’re less deserving because they’re here illegally, Ryder said.

“We’re all better off when everyone has access to healthcare and housing,” Ryder said. “There’s a sense that farmworkers take things away as opposed to contributing, that they come here and work and send all money back to Mexico and that our economy will suffer because that money is leaving. The very small money they earn for their wages is a small percentage compared to the overall revenue of the agricultural industry.”