STOCKTON RECORD (California)

May 31, 2006

Illegal farm workers to get limited help
70 left homeless after complaint at Roberts Island

San Joaquin County agencies rushed to help Roberts Island farm workers who were uprooted from their illegal trailer park last week, but the workers will be eligible for only limited public assistance, since most of them are in the country illegally.

More than 70 people were left homeless Thursday after the county Environmental Health Department visited Abbate Farms to follow up on a complaint about mobile homes and trailers being used as permanent housing for farm-worker families.
Some of these families qualify for public housing, but for the other families, agencies "can't do anything if they don't have Social Security cards," said Peggy Wagner, director of the San Joaquin Fair Housing Association.

At least one family member must be able to prove legal U.S. residency for a family to receive assistance. While county officials were trying to help the families, it became clear that most didn't have proper immigration paperwork, authorities said.

Farm owner Paul Abbate said he didn't know this was an issue. "We fill out paperwork for all of them, so as far I'm concerned, they're all legal," he said.

When Alan Biederman, a lead senior environmental health specialist with the health department, showed up on Abbate's property, he found sewage on the ground, unsafe electrical wiring and scattered propane containers. The clustered recreational-vehicle-style trailers were not connected to public water.

Abbate's workers have been living on his vegetable farm for almost 10 years, he said. He was not charging them rent to park their trailers on the property.

Biederman has been to this farm before, in May 1999, when he went to inspect a complaint about rats in the only mobile home on the property that was not condemned.

This time, the county gave Abbate 15 days to bring the housing up to code, but the RV-style trailers were deemed unfit for human occupancy. The inspectors will return June 9 to see if repairs have been made.

The San Joaquin County Housing Authority has put the eligible families at the front of the line for public housing. They can get their housing vouchers as early as Friday, according to Ed Sido, the agency's chief executive officer.

"When people are displaced by government action, they do get priority," he said.

In the meantime, the residents are either staying as long as they can or living with friends or relatives. The county's migrant-worker camps are full, and the Stockton homeless shelter is almost out of space, Wagner said.

County agencies used to put people up in hotels, but "with rental prices being as they are, it's not as easy as it was five or six years ago," she said.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Stockton, which does not inquire into citizenship status, has been helping families get money to pay rent and make security deposits for places in town, said Jose Lopez, the diocese's director for migrant ministry.

Abbate said he will work with the county and the diocese to fix up the facilities and bring them up to code. But even then, the community of farm workers may not be the same. The children used to play together while their parents worked in the fields, he said.

"You think you're doing something good by condemning it, but you're splitting up these communities," Wagner agreed. "It gives a better standard of living, but it's traumatic."