Monday November 14, 2005
By MARTIN ESPINOZA
and MARY FRICKER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Shrouded by smoke, Catarino Valencia feeds a reluctant fire with half-wet twigs as his friend, Jesus Verduzco, peels the thin foil away from his burrito. While Verduzco eats his dinner, Valencia boils a large pot of water the men will later use for their baths.
It's one of the last meals the two farmworkers will share this grape harvest as the camp, tucked away in a wooded area next to a vineyard just outside of Graton, closes for winter. For weeks it was home for the two migrant farmworkers whose evening routine was shared by two dozen other men and one married couple, sleeping in camping tents or plastic tarps pitched over red wooden platforms.
"In the past, my boss has always provided me with a place to stay," said Valencia, 40. "But this year I couldn't find him so I came here."
Valencia and Verduzco are among an estimated 1,500 migrant farm laborers who at critical times bolster Sonoma County's established vineyard work force of about 3,500, according to a Press Democrat analysis of state and industry employment statistics.
Unseen to most residents, they begin trickling into the county in February, swell to about 600 by April and peak in numbers during the harvest, which came to an end last week.
Their experience finding a place to live also is largely unnoticed, exposed only by the worst of conditions such as the discovery last April that nearly 30 farmworkers were crowded into a small, dilapidated house in Windsor.
Often, the conditions are substandard, even leading to sanitation problems that alarm health officials and crowding that concerns neighbors. But a solution is elusive because of a combination of factors that include the highly mobile nature of the migrant workers, their self-interest in finding the least expensive housing possible, pay at the low-end of the county wage scale and the illegal immigrant status of many.
At the same time, efforts to provide additional housing have encountered resistance from the community and grape growers who have focused their efforts on providing housing for their own year-round workers.
Yet it is a challenge that should not be ignored, said Sonoma County Supervisor Valerie Brown, who represents the Sonoma Valley.
"We expect a lot of our farmworkers," she said. "To think that at the end of the day, they go back to a bed and a room with 15 people is not the standard of living we pride ourselves on in Sonoma County."
The reality for many migrant workers is that they are brought into the county from the Central Valley by labor contractors and end up in packed motel rooms or rundown houses. Others band together in an apartment, sharing the cost of the county's high rents. Still others, in an effort to maximize their earnings that average about $8.50 an hour, set up camps along creeks and rivers.
"It's hard, but you get used to it," said Verduzco, 49. "But there's nothing like living comfortably inside a room."
Varied policies
There is no standard approach to farmworker housing in Wine Country. Napa County growers tax themselves to build housing, including a yurt-style village in Yountville. Sonoma County vineyard owners have rejected that approach, with some providing for bunkhouses as a cost-effective way to house their workers, and others providing the job, but no housing.
And there has been limited community support to develop or subsidize housing for migrant workers, who are present in the community only on a seasonal basis and often are undocumented immigrants, when other workers in low-paying jobs also are scrambling to survive and are forced to find housing on their own.
"You can say no one is forcing them to live out in the open or to live eight or 10 to a room," said Chris Paige, deputy CEO of the California Human Development Corporation. "But what are really the alternatives in this county?"
Nick Frey, executive director of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association, said that Sonoma County's wine industry is better at providing housing for farm workers than most areas in the state.
"And it's done by individual vineyard owners and managers," he said. "What's more, I don't know of any other employers that provide significant housing for their work force."
Crowded room
At the Monte Vista hotel on Santa Rosa Avenue this fall, Central Valley farmworkers split the cost of $325-a-week hotel rooms among four to six or more people.
Sergio Soto, 43, a Mexico City native who lives full-time in Madera with his wife and son, crowded into a room with four other men during harvest. Two men shared the bed, while two slept on the floor.
Soto, who along with eight others was brought to Sonoma County by a labor contractor, was picking grapes in Alexander Valley for about $50 a day.
Many at the motel said they had families back in Mexico that they support by periodically sending part of their earnings. Their housing decisions are based on the amount of money they are trying to save.
Hourly wages are better in Sonoma County, ranging from $8 to $12 an hour, compared to the state minimum wage paid in the Central Valley. But they say the high cost of living in the North Coast can quickly eat away at their earnings.
During the harvest, much of the migrant labor force is absorbed by local apartments. Some Latino families take in migrant farmworkers and seasonal laborers who stay longer, renting their extra rooms to a handful of men for $100, $200 or $250 per person a month. The amount sometimes depends on the number of people per room.
Splitting rent
Serafin, a migrant farmworker who spoke on condition that only his first name be used, said he and two other men each paid $200 a month to rent a room in a Healdsburg apartment that belonged to a Latino couple.
Serafin worked the night shift during the harvest, from midnight to 6 a.m. After work, he would shower, take a nap, then spend part of the afternoon with other farmworkers and day laborers in Healdsburg Plaza.
About a mile from the plaza, a makeshift camp often used by migrant farmworkers and day laborers is hidden by thick brush and trees along Foss Creek.
Mostly empty at the end of harvest, the camp still shows evidence of those who lived there. Tents made of dusty black plastic tarps that blend into the brush are filled with blankets and clothing.
At the nearby creek, clothes lines are strung from one tree to another. And hand soap and other toiletries can still be found near the side of a small pool-like section of the creek.
Health hazards
Walt Kruse, director of environmental health for the Sonoma County Department of Health Services, said camps like these are health hazards.
"There are no provisions for proper sewage and garbage, sometimes even medical waste disposal," said Kruse. "And there's an inadequate potable water supply. They are harmful to individuals and to the environment and should be reduced and eliminated as (housing) alternatives are created."
Supervisor Brown said the uncertainty surrounding seasonal harvests makes it difficult to accurately assess the housing needs of migrant farmworkers. She said many obtain housing through an underground network that includes vineyard owners, friends and family, labor contractors, churches and farmworker advocates.
"We need to get a handle on what the problem is," she said. "There is a network of people who have that information. But getting that information is very difficult."
She applauded the work of Vineyard Workers Services, which provides dozens of migrant farmworkers with temporary housing at two trailer camps in Sonoma, one of which is partially funded by the annual Sonoma Valley Harvest Wine Auction. For $8 a day, the men are provided with a bed, showers, bathrooms and two hot meals a week.
Some workers come for a full 10 months, from pruning in January to the end of harvest in November. About 600 arrive in April, and they're joined by another 900 in August as the harvest kicks in.
Assessing the extent of the housing problem is made more difficult by the role of labor contractors, who bring in about 700 migrant workers over the course of the year.
When federal regulators raided the Windsor home, they found that the nearly 30 farmworkers who lived there were among 200 migrant workers Gallo Vineyards had hired through Central Valley labor contractors to work Gallo's Sonoma County fields nearly year-round.
John Segale, a Gallo spokesperson, said the company was not aware that any of its contract employees were living in sub-standard housing.
"We don't know what their housing situation is, whether they are living alone or as a group," said Segale. "Some of these are privacy issues."
Alluring pay
The prospect of earning $100 a day or more is what makes some migrant farmworkers endure such conditions. It's what brought Valencia and Verduzco from their home base of Ivanhoe in Tulare County. Rents there are much cheaper, but the pay is also lower.
While the two would rather have had a motel or apartment room than camp out during the harvest, camping at least lets them save as much money as possible.
As the harvest came to an end, Verduzco and Valencia spent their days trying to land a late harvest job that would lead to a winter pruning gig. But each morning turned up only odd jobs with few hours.
Two days before the camp closed, they packed up and left for the Central Valley. There, the orange, kiwi and persimmon harvests await them.