YUMA (Arizona) SUN

November 19, 2008

Worker housing addressed

BY JOYCE LOBECK, SUN STAFF WRITER

Tanimura and Antle assured city officials the company has taken multiple steps to ensure that its use of apartment complexes to house its farm workers won't be disruptive to the neighbors or the community.

Efforts by agriculture companies, including Tanimura and Antle, to obtain the itinerant work force they need to harvest and process the area's winter produce crops increasingly includes offers of housing. That has led to concerns by neighbors that apartment buildings are being bought up to be converted into farmworker bunkhouses to the detriment of the neighborhood.

Attorney Barry Olsen, representing the agriculture company, sought to dispel that concern during a presentation to the Yuma City Council during its roundtable meeting Tuesday afternoon.

"The apartments won't be bunkhouses," he said. "They are apartments that happen to be occupied by farmworkers. I don't see that as any different than other apartment complexes."

Earlier this year, Olsen said, Tanimura and Antle purchased Aloha Apartments in the 1000 block of 10th Street and the Park View complex at 1003 W. 20th St., for a total of 273 units.

Olsen said that Tanimura and Antle met with the fire marshal and city building and safety officials, conducting a walkthrough of the units to establish acceptable and safe occupancy levels for the two complexes.

To further ensure public safety, the company has a security contract for walk-throughs of the complexes and it will have managers and other staff on site, Olsen said. He added that he believes the company has gone to great lengths to protect its workers and the public.

In addition, Olsen said, all employees hired through the H2A guest worker program have undergone an extensive background check by the U.S. Department of Labor and Homeland Security. "These are more extensive background checks than is usual for apartment complexes, even the most exclusive ones."

As for fears of disruptive traffic from the concentration of workers, he said it makes more sense to have workers clustered in an apartment complex and requiring only one bus stop instead of having them scattered around the city in single-family houses.

That not only is less disruptive to neighborhoods, Olsen said. Having its workers housed in Yuma also means shorter bus rides for them and a smaller "carbon footprint" that is better for the environment, he said.

"Tanimura and Antle is extremely sensitive to the environmental impact it has. It's also sensitive to the community that is growing up around agriculture. It's trying to be compatible with the community."

Olsen also said that despite the growth of the community, agriculture remains a major economic sector, one that remains relatively stable even during the current economic downturn. Tanimura and Antle alone has 1,700 farm workers and a payroll of more than $10 million, he said.

"With the H2A program, we're getting as good neighbors as we can," responded Councilman Ross Hieb. "Tanimura and Antle has taken steps to ensure there's no problem. The program is well thought out. It's certainly in the best interest of the community to keep agriculture going."