SANTA ROSA PRESS-DEMOCRAT

June 22, 2006

Following Napa Valley's lead Farm Worker group seeks land for migrant housing

3-year Sonoma County search fails to find suitable location SEEKING SHELTER

By MARY FRICKER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

In Napa Valley, the long road to getting migrant housing was similar to the process under way now in Sonoma County, including years of work by a committee like the Sonoma County Farm Worker Housing Group.

At one time, some Napa Valley growers provided housing for their own workers, as in Sonoma County. But when land values and regulation increased, some closed those facilities, said Peter Dreier, executive director of the Napa Valley Housing Authority. Heublein Inc. and Robert Mondavi Corp. turned their farm worker housing over to the authority in 1992 and 1993.

Meanwhile, in the 1990s the super-premium end of the wine business began requiring more hand vine care and more skilled workers, said Tom Shelton, CEO of Joseph Phelps Vineyards in St. Helena.

In 2000 Bay Area television reported overcrowding and people living in boxes by the river. The reports appalled the Napa Valley grape growing community, and they vowed to find a solution.

"We bring this labor force to our area. We are the demand side of this curve. I think we have a responsibility," Shelton said.

Finding the land was the hard part, Shelton said, until Joseph Phelps stepped forward to give eight acres. Ownership reverts to him if the farm worker housing closes. Today dormitories on that site can house 60 migrants, who pay $11.50 a day for a bed and three meals a day, six days a week.

A per-acre tax approved in 2002 and contributions from the Napa Valley Wine Auction are helping to renovate the Heublein and Mondavi sites and to operate all three.

Napa Valley's success can be duplicated in Sonoma County, Shelton said.

"What needs to happen there is what happened here. A well-meaning landowner needs to step up. I'm sure that will happen," Shelton said.

"It's good for the industry, and it's good for the farm workers. It sets the right tone for quality grape growing regions. It is just the right thing to do," Shelton said.

After spending three fruitless years trying to find a site for migrant farm worker housing in Sonoma County, a housing group is calling on grape growers to make land available for the project.

The Sonoma County Farm Worker Housing Group has traveled down a dozen dead ends in its effort to find temporary housing for migrant farm workers.

Now it's preparing to launch a direct appeal to leading grape growers, landowners and philanthropists, even as it continues to look on the open market for parcels. Once property is in hand, financing can be found for development, they said.

"For three years we have looked all over Sonoma County. It's been one obstacle after another," said Healdsburg grape grower and attorney Susan Lentz, who chairs the group. "The financing is less of an obstacle than finding the right site."

During its three years, the housing group has tried to buy a Cloverdale motel, made offers on several lots around the county, sought surplus city or county land and tried to encourage neighbors to accept farm worker housing in their community.

So far, no luck.

The need for migrant housing was underscored Tuesday during the monthly meeting of the group at the Healdsburg Job Center. While 13 housing advocates met inside, seven Latino men were outside, waiting for work. They said they would welcome migrant housing.

Five of the men rent rooms with other workers, each paying $300 to $400 a month. Ulises Roman, 23, and Abel Flores, 40, said they live at the creek under a bridge.

"There are many people who don't have places to live," said Luis Gavidia, 40.

The housing group grew out of the county's first Affordable Housing Week in 2003, when farm worker advocates set out to find temporary housing for migrants, mainly vineyard workers.

Two years later their resolve was reinforced when state labor officials swooped down on a dilapidated three-bedroom, one-bath house in Windsor and found 29 migrants living in squalor. A labor contractor had brought the men from the Central Valley to work for Gallo of Sonoma.

The housing group has set up a fund at Community Foundation Sonoma County to receive contributions, including real estate, and they're preparing materials that will explain the advantages of donations. Their supporters have raised about $20,000 toward an endowment to help operate the housing.

Their goal is to start small, with at least two acres and perhaps 60 to 80 units, and expand if the first project is successful.

A facility for 80 farm workers might cost $4 million, or less than $3 million if the land is donated, said John Lowry, executive director of Burbank Housing Development Corp., which is a member of the farm worker housing group.

To some extent, the group would like to copy Napa County's program in which land donations or leases from three grape growers - Joseph Phelps Vineyard, Heublein Inc. (now Diageo Wine Group) and Robert Mondavi Corp. (now Constellation Brands) - and a grower-initiated yearly tax of up to $10 an acre are key reasons the county has 220 beds for migrant workers.

"I would love Gallo or Kendall-Jackson to step forward and give us a long-term 30-year lease on a little parcel not being used for grapes," said David Rosas, program planner for California Human Development Corp., which is part of the farm worker housing group.

Gallo and Kendall-Jackson did not return calls over two days requesting comment.

In Sonoma County, a handful of the region's leading grape growers - probably fewer than 20 out of almost 900 growers - have built bunkhouses for 708 of their own employees in the past decade.

"It's an attempt to attract qualified employees. You compete against other people seeking that same labor," said Nick Frey, executive director of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association, which is part of the housing group.

But those bunkhouses are not open to most of the estimated 1,500 migrant workers who come through Sonoma County at various times of the year seeking work. Migrants who take a job working exclusively for one grower during a busy period may get to stay in a bunkhouse for a while, but when the work is over, they lose their housing.

The farm worker housing group has asked growers to lease unused bunkhouse space to migrants, but as yet no one has agreed, in part because some insurance policies require that on-site worker housing be for employees.

Sonoma County grape growers are of a mixed mind about providing housing for migrant workers, Frey said.

Growers who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build bunkhouses for their own workers wonder why they should have to pay to house people who work for someone else.

Some point out that grape growers aren't the only people who hire migrant workers, so costs should be shared. Roman and Flores, for example, take whatever work is available to them at the job center, often yard work.

Some growers resent being the only industry expected to provide housing for employees. But that argument is losing steam as soaring home values force many industries to try to find ways to subsidize housing for employees.

The Sonoma County Grape Growers Association has advertised in its newsletter for growers to donate land or existing housing for migrants, but no one has stepped forward, Frey said.

"This is an experiment worth running, if they can find the land," Frey said. "We know everybody's needs are not being met. But how big is that segment? I think the only way to do it is to get a facility and try."