Quick Take
A 2018 report estimated that the Pajaro Valley and Salinas regions needed more than 45,000 additional housing units for farmworkers, but a new analysis finds that just 4,500 beds for farmworkers and 300 permanent homes have been added since.
The Monterey Bay area has made strides in building new housing for farmworker families, but it has fallen far short of what’s needed to address overcrowded conditions, according to a new analysis by a committee tasked with monitoring progress on the region’s agricultural housing development.
A 2018 report by the California Institute for Rural Studies and the California Coalition for Rural Housing estimated that the Pajaro Valley and Salinas regions needed 45,560 additional housing units in order to alleviate “critical overcrowding” among the area’s farmworkers.
But since then, just 4,500 beds for farmworkers and more than 300 new permanent homes for farmworker families have been built or are near completion, according to an oversight committee. The committee includes representatives from the Grower-Shipper Association of Central California, the Monterey County Farm Bureau, the cities of Salinas, Gonzales, Watsonville and Monterey, the County of Santa Cruz and the office of California State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, whose 29th District includes parts of Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara counties.
“It’s hard not to be disappointed given the intense need,” said Matt Huerta, housing and community development director at the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership and a member of the oversight committee. “And at the same time, I’m hopeful that the stakeholders around the table and the farmworkers themselves, that together we’ll be able to win more housing for families.”
Huerta said two of the greatest barriers to development are the rising costs of construction and the challenges of finding land to build apartments.
All of the six new projects that add up to the 4,500 new units are in Monterey County, and one of those is in Pajaro. Huerta said most of the growers who employ large numbers of fieldworkers are based in Monterey County. He added that about 100 homes have been built for farmworkers in Santa Cruz County since 2018.
The six projects were built by agricultural employers including Taylor Farms and Bengard Ranch and were financed with private funding from the employers.
The projects are apartment-style rental homes. Huerta said the units have a kitchen and living room and two large bedrooms with two bunk beds in each – for a total of four people in a room.
The one such apartment in Pajaro is still under construction but is almost done, according to Huerta.
Ann Lopez, the executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families, said she hasn’t noticed any new housing in the region having an impact on farmworkers. If anything, the conditions have only deteriorated more for farmworker families.
“Since I started working with farmers 25 years ago, it’s gotten worse because the rents are higher now for whatever does exist,” she said.
Lopez said the conditions and treatment of farmworkers are “disgraceful.” She thinks cities, counties and the state need to better support and finance housing specifically for the farmworker population.
“Cities like Watsonville, Salinas and some of the Central Valley need to declare an emergency and petition the state for funding to build these units immediately,” she said. “I think it has to come from the state because nothing’s happening locally, for lack of money, for lack of interest, for lack of who knows what? But the bottom line is, we don’t have [the housing].”
Huerta said state investment is “extremely competitive” because there is a great need for housing relief for many vulnerable groups across California. He agrees that not enough has been done.
“It just underscores the urgency for us to really identify the highest priorities and actionable things that we can do from the original study,” he said. “There are some successes to celebrate so we also don’t want to underplay those successes. But in the end, there’s so much to do.”
The 2018 Farmworker Housing Study and Action Plan for Salinas Valley and Pajaro Valley was an exhaustive 502-page look at the region’s farmworker housing crisis. It included an extensive overview of the housing conditions for farmworkers, their housing needs and the barriers to developing housing in this region.
The study identified more than 91,400 farmworkers in the region, many of whom are often overpaying for rent, living in garages and sheds or renting floor space in non-bedroom locations.
After publishing the report in 2018, the oversight committee met quarterly for several years. The committee hadn’t met in over a year until its gathering April 17 at the grower-shipper association’s headquarters in Salinas.
Huerta said the committee plans to meet again sometime in the summer, when it will do a deeper dive on the new housing projects that are scheduled to be built in the next few years.
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