DAYTONA BEACH NEWS-JOURNAL March 27, 2005 A PLACE TO CALL HOME Despite laws that regulate housing for farmworkers, they are not enforced and many immigrants in northwest Volusia County live in substandard conditions.
PIERSON – Guillermo Perez is shivering, a thin sweater clutched around him, as he opens the door of his dilapidated mobile home.
The wooden steps are rotten. The skirt around its base disappeared years ago. The windows are cracked and the winter cold seems trapped inside the aluminum walls, as if in an icy soda can.
“It is very, very bad,” Perez says in broken English.
Perez and his 10 roommates pay $1,100 a month for the 756-square-foot mobile home, which doesn’t have heat or a refrigerator or a working stove.
The stench of urine in the mobile home is nauseating. Beer cans and clothes litter the shredded linoleum floors of every room. The men sleep without sheets on stained mattresses jammed together on the floor.
Each day, their landlord and crew leader Fidel Velazquez picks up Perez and the other men and drives them to a local fernery owned by Pierson Town Council Chairman Samuel Bennett.
They are among the estimated 5,000 or more illegal Mexican workers in northwest Volusia County. Many workers live in substandard housing, despite numerous local, state and federal regulations designed to ensure adequate housing for farmworkers. Instead, loopholes and inspectors’ apparent indifference limit enforcement.
“The officials won’t do anything unless someone complains,” said Tirso Moreno of The Farmworker Association of Florida. “But because they are undocumented, the workers won’t complain. They don’t know their rights or what these regulations say. They fear losing a place to live, losing their jobs, being deported.”
A drive around Pierson reveals mobile homes with drooping roofs and missing windows; houses with crumbling walls. In a four-month investigation into farmworkers’ living and working conditions, The Daytona Beach News-Journal found: · Federal officials have not inspected farmworker housing in Volusia County in the past five years, even though a federal appellate court ruled in 1993 that fern cutters should be protected under a federal migrant housing law.
· The Volusia County Health Department is supposed to inspect migrant housing twice every 12 weeks, under a state migrant housing law, but enforcement ceased seven years ago. A local inspector said fernery owners complained so much that state officials in Tallahassee told him to stop permitting and inspecting labor camps.
· The only state inspections occur under a less stringent law regulating all mobile home parks. That law focuses more on the exterior condition of the structures while the migrant housing law requires heat, air-conditioning, refrigerators, beds and fire protection, such as smoke detectors.
· Volusia County officials say violations of county codes that prohibit such things as unsafe and dilapidated structures are dealt with on a complaint-only basis. Another county code, prohibiting more than six unrelated persons from living in one dwelling, is too hard to enforce, a county official said.
· Pierson Town Council members have voted against creating a code enforcement board to crack down on dilapidated housing. One council member wants to change that. But having a board wouldn’t matter – there is no housing code. Other ordinances theoretically could be enforced, if someone complained, but the town doesn’t have the staff, the town clerk said.
PERSISTENT VIOLATIONS Chairman Bennett has been cited for persistent violations of state law during the past 15 years. His mobile homes, rented to farmworkers and inspected under the less-stringent state law governing all mobile home parks, have been cited for infractions ranging from raw sewage flowing around the mobile homes and exposed electrical wires to roach infestations, according to Volusia County Health Department records. He has never paid a fine, records show.
Marianne Adunas lives with her husband and 10-year-old son in a mobile home at Bennett’s mobile home park. They pay $313 a month, including electricity. They don’t have air conditioning or heat, but Adunas considers herself lucky. The mobile home next door doesn’t have a door, she points out.
Officials of the county Health Department which falls under the state Department of Health, have a fat file on the park, where seven mobile homes manufactured in the early 1950s sit.
In 1994, the Health Department cited Bennett for a pool of sewage on the grounds, garbage around the mobile homes and a well that was not set at least 100 feet from the septic system. In January 1997, inspectors again found raw sewage on the ground. In March that year, inspectors found exposed wires creating a fire hazard, holes in the floors and walls and broken septic tank lids. At their next visit in June, inspectors found more septic tank, garbage and electrical problems, as well as roach infestations.
In 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2003, inspectors continued to find sewage problems. In 2002, the Health Department received a complaint about the smell of raw sewage coming from the mobile home park. After he was cited, Bennett made repairs.
Last July, inspectors told Bennett to replace the septic tank lids because they posed an immediate threat to children who might fall into the tanks. The inspectors also found open electrical boxes, kitchen waste flowing onto the ground and that there were no garbage containers on the property. Bennett was given until Aug. 20 to fix the problems, with the exception of removing a storm-damaged mobile home.
“There are no violations,” said Bennett. He blamed past violations on tenants who didn’t clean up. “When there is debris and beer cans left over the weekend, then that has to be cleaned up,” he said.
He said the only sewage problem had been a broken septic tank lid, caused by a car driving over it.
Jim McRae, environmental supervisor for the Health Department, said Bennett is well known to inspectors.
“Every couple of years we have to get after him to get him back in compliance,” McRae said.
McRae said Bennett never has paid a fine in all of the years of violations because the department would have to go to court which would take time and cost money.
A HOLLOW VICTORY Both Congress and the Florida Legislature have passed laws to protect migrants from unscrupulous landlords and ensure decent living conditions.
A federal appeals court ruled in 1983 that fern cutters were covered by the federal migrant housing law in a case between a Pierson fern cutter and grower Curtis Richardson. The law empowers the U.S. Labor Department to ensure adequate housing through inspections and by investigating violations.
But 12 years later, officials do not routinely inspect labor camps in the Pierson area. James Breidenstein, district director for the U.S. Department of Labor in Jacksonville, said his records show there haven’t been any inspections in Volusia County in the past five years.
Gregory Schell, an attorney with the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in Lake Worth, represented fern cutters in a suit that led to the federal ruling. He said he is shocked that the victory now seems hollow.
Florida also has a law covering migrant farmworker housing. But the law doesn’t help most fern cutters in Pierson because they don’t migrate from place to place. Their mobile homes and houses are covered only if they are classified as labor camps. To be a camp, workers must reside on their employer’s property.
So, for example, Perez and his 10 roommates in a mobile home don’t live in a camp. They all work for Bennett, but someone else owns the mobile home and the property, and Bennett’s crew chief acts as the landlord.
If migrant housing laws covered the mobile home, it would have heat. No one would sleep on the floor. Each man would have a bed.
McRae of the Health department admits some mobile homes and houses that probably should be considered labor camps aren’t being inspected. “We probably need to be back in it.” In 1998, the Health Department stopped its inspections. The growers said the law didn’t apply even to labor camps for fernery workers because they work year-round and aren’t seasonal. The health department later changed the definition of seasonal workers, so they would be covered. But even then, the inspections didn’t resume, the local inspector said.
“We were told by Tallahassee to stop permitting camps, to refund their money,” McRae said.
He said he and other inspectors noticed Bennett’s and Richardson’s mobile homes fell under the mobile home statute and continued to inspect them.
Fern cutters still live in mobile homes on property owned by Curtis Richardson’s brother, Clyde Richardson. To find the Richardson mobile homes, a driver must turn off of U.S. 17 onto Purdom Cemetery Road. The road winds past a small cemetery surrounded by a ripped wire fence. The paved road ends and a car must push on, even as its wheels spin.
It’s easy to miss the turn, under downed power lines, and to continue into the fern fields, but a sharp left turn takes a driver to about seven mobile homes. A dog runs toward the car barking, then settles in the dust.
A middle-aged woman answers the door of one mobile home. She is afraid to giver her name.
“I don’t want any problem with the patron,” she said, “since we don’t have to pay rent to live here.”
The mobile homes are licensed and inspected as a mobile home park, but not as a labor camp. “We may need to take a look at that,” said McRae.
The mobile homes were inspected as migrant housing in 1997, before the controversy in Tallahassee. Inspectors found broken showers, missing floor grates and large holes in the mobile homes. As a mobile home park, it has received satisfactory inspections, which focus more on the exterior conditions.
Employers of another fernery, Albin Hagstrom & Sons, Inc., live in apartments. One said she pays $80 a week for the three-room apartment.
Out in the fields, Hagstrom fern cutter Dimetrio Santoyo said he lives in “the company housing.” Santoyo said his wife and children are in Mexico City and he is able to send home about $200 a week.
McRae said the Health Department once classified the apartments as a labor camp and perhaps should take another look at it.
The Health Department lists only one labor camp in Volusia County. F.P. Cade and Sons owns a house in Seville. Health department inspectors first went to the house in 2000, where they found roaches scurrying on the walls, no heat, no lighting, no hot water and no smoke detectors. Inspectors found chickens roaming freely in the trash-filled yard.
Cade contacted his state legislator, then Rep. Pat Patterson, R-DeLand, who called the Health Department, according to records, but in the end Cade paid to be licensed as a migrant camp owner. Later inspections have been “satisfactory,” although reports continue to note problems with hot water above 110 degrees, broken windows, missing screens and insects.
Charlie Rivers, office manager for the fernery now called Cade Ferneries, said one house should not be called a labor camp. “We just rent some houses for people who work for us,” he said.
Two fern workers, Jose Luis and Paul Barajas, say they recently arrived from the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. They live with 10 other workers in a trailer next to the fern fields of the C. Frank Jones Fernery. They said they pay their crew leader, Florencio Rodriguez, to live in the trailer.
Rodriguez says he owns the trailer on land owned by his boss. Frank Jones said he leases the property to Rodriguez.
“I don’t have anything to do with it,” said Jones.
He said he didn’t know 12 of his workers lived there. “I don’t know anything about what they do there. I stay clear of the place.” Housing inspector McRae said it sounded like it would qualify as a migrant labor camp.
PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVE The Farmworker Association’s Moreno thinks the local health department and the U.S. Labor Department should be out inspecting, not relying on complaints. His group puts the number of illegal workers in Northwest Volusia at 5,000 to 10,000. They rarely speak English and, fearing deportation, are not in a position to contact authorities and complain, he said.
Federal and state officials aren’t the only ones ignoring housing conditions in the Pierson area. County and town officials are doing little to ensure decent housing, either.
“The county could pass a housing code. Pierson could pass a housing code, but they won’t,” said Schell of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project.
Although Volusia County does not have a housing code, it has other codes addressing housing, such as those prohibiting unsafe and dilapidated structures. But violations are dealt with on a complaint-only basis, said Mary Robinson, county building and zoning director. She said the county doesn’t have the staff to go out and inspect for violations.
The mobile home leased by Bennett’s crew leader to 11 men and the one leased by Jones’ crew leader to 12 men may violate another county ordinance, which restricts the number of people who can live in a house or mobile home, according to Robinson.
But the county has a hard time enforcing the rule prohibiting more than six unrelated people from living in one dwelling, she said. “We don’t go knocking on doors asking if you have more than six people,” said Robinson. “We are reactive, not proactive.”
In 1998, the same year the Health Department halted its inspections, the Pierson Town Council, on Bennett’s motion, rejected a proposed ordinance to set up a Code Enforcement Board for the town.
Billy Carter, the only member of the five-person Town Council who isn’t a fernery owner, proposed the board in 1998. He brought up the idea again at the council’s January meeting.
But Town Clerk Debbie Bass said a board wouldn’t matter when it comes to housing because there is no housing code to enforce. She said town ordinances that address land use exempt mobile homes for farmworkers. Other ordinances theoretically could be enforced if someone complained, but the town doesn’t have the staff, she said.
Some communities with large farmworker populations are more aggressive in pursuing housing violations.
Armand Harnois, Lake Worth’s chief code officer, has set up a special team to conduct block inspections in neighborhoods to check for overcrowding in apartment and mobile homes. “When you see 15 pairs of shoes in front of one unit, you know you have more people living in that one-bedroom unit than you should,” said Harnois, a former police officer.
If inspectors find violations, they post notices on the property and send the owner a certified notice, giving him 10 days to correct violations, said Harnois. If the repairs aren’t made, the owner must appear at a hearing before a special master, who can bring fines of $500 a day and begin foreclosure proceedings, if the fines aren’t paid, said Harnois.
In January, Lake Worth had hearings on 73 cases. Harnois said the city has about three foreclosures a month because of housing violations.
In Pierson, farmworkers’ advocate Moreno says one of the solutions would be construction of new apartments and public housing.
But, when the government has built housing for migrant workers, it hasn’t always taken into account the realities of the workers’ lives. In 2001, the New Hope Villas, a rent-subsidized apartment complex opened for migrant workers in Northwest Volusia. But, because the $6 million project was largely federally funded, prospective tenants must show they are legally in the country, which knocks out most of the workers.
Schell said the other problem is that most government housing is built for families, which doesn’t help the single men moving into the Pierson area. As crossing the border becomes more dangerous, more men leave their families behind. Census figures show men outnumber women in Pierson by a ratio of 6 to 4.
For Guillermo Perez, who shares his mobile home with 10 other men, the solution is simple. He is going back to California.
Perez, 37, moved to Florida last fall after he heard he could make more money picking ferns than fruit and vegetables. He’s found that isn’t the case.
He’s planning to find a better place to live in California. A stove is his top priority, he said, as he heated a can of beans on a hot plate.
FARMWORKER’S APPELLATE VICTORY CHANGES LITTLE
Fernery owners have long argued that migrant housing laws shouldn’t apply to their workers because most of them live here year-round.
In 1989, a Pierson fern cutter named Jose Jesus Caro-Galvan sued grower Curtis Richardson, now deceased, and argued that the rent was too high on the old mobile homes that Richardson provided to workers.
The federal court in Orlando dismissed the suit in 1991, saying Caro-Galvan did not have the right to sue under the federal Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act because technically he didn’t migrate.
But a federal appeals court in Atlanta overturned the decision in 1993, ruling fern cutters are, in fact, covered by the law. The appeals court pointed to evidence the mobile homes were riddled with holes and infested by rodents and insects. Caro-Galvan’s wife testified her son had been bitten on the hand by a rat. Rent and utility costs were deducted from the workers’ paychecks. Sometimes their net pay was zero, according to the opinion.
Caro-Galvan was evicted and fired after he brought suit, the court noted. The fern cutters “are the very type of farm laborers Congress intended to protect,” the court held.
The court found that exploitation is possible because any action that displeases the employer – including complaining about work or housing conditions – could result in the worker being not only jobless, but homeless. In its opinion, the court also noted labor camps work to an employer’s advantage by guaranteeing the presence of a stable work force.
Twelve years later, the ruling has meant little to fern cutters living in labor camps in the Pierson area.
James Breidenstein, district director for the U.S. Department of Labor in Jacksonville, said his records show there haven’t been any inspections of labor camps in Volusia County in the past five years.
Breidenstein said his agency, charged with enforcing the federal migrant law, doesn’t just operate on complaints and can initiate its own inspections, but it hasn’t done so in Volusia County. He said he didn’t know why.
TOWN’S UPKEEP? PIERSON COUNCILMAN A LONE VOICE
PIERSON – Greeting neighbors in his cozy diner, Billy Carter said he loves the small-town pace in Pierson.
“It’s the best place in the world to live,” he said. “You don’t hear no ambulances, no police cars here.”
Carter packs them in for his specials: fried chicken on Wednesdays, and catfish and flounder on Fridays. “It’s a madhouse,” he said.
Carter, 65, may seem an unlikely advocate for change in Pierson. But there comes a point, he said, when something must be done. And it’s time to clean up Pierson.
The only member of the five-person Town Council who isn’t a fernery owner, Carter is pushing the town to create a Code Enforcement Board to crack down on unsafe and unsanitary housing in Pierson.
Carter drove around town and wrote down addresses of dilapidated vacant houses. One house “looks like a garbage dump,” Carter wrote. Another house needed its “yard cleaned up and house repaired.” Next to most he simply wrote “condemn.”
Carter, a town councilman for 15 years, first proposed a code board in 1998. The plan was rejected. He brought up the idea again at the council’s January meeting.
He asked his fellow council members if they had driven by the places on her list. They looked down and shifted in their seats.
“Now, I need to get some help, ya’ll,” Carter said, clearly exasperated. “I asked you to go around and look. It’s up to you. If you want a good-looking town or you want something crummy.”
Council members did not consider Carter’s proposed ordinance, but referred the issue to the town attorney and city planner for study.
Carter, who thinks the council’s reaction was “not too good,” said he won’t touch the subject of mobile homes occupied by farmworkers.
“Don’t even ask me about those mobile homes,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know that we can ever do anything about them, to be honest.
“The thing about Pierson is it’s like a small town. Nobody likes to make people mad, so they don’t like to get into people’s business,” he said.
Carter said he hopes the council will decide to create a Code Enforcement Board. He said he often brings a different perspective to the Town Council since he’s not in the fernery business.
“We don’t always agree on things, but that’s why there’s five of us.”
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