PORTLAND OREGONIAN

October 15, 2009

Camp Azul migrant housing could become farm community

By Bill Oram, The Oregonian

A Washington County workers camp that has long been considered a prime example of what is wrong with migrant housing will be turned into a smaller farming community if the owners can secure necessary funding.

Andre and Kathy Meyer, who bought Camp Azul five years ago, plan to tear down the 54 blue shacks for which the camp is named and replace them with 14 cabins, each 1,000 square feet.

The Meyers said they are seeking a partner organization or investor for what they anticipate will be a $1 million overhaul of the migrant camp that in 1998 was nearly closed by the state for a slew of code violations stemming mostly from filthy and unsafe housing.

The Meyers' plan is currently without a timeline, though they must build within two years, a condition of the county's approval in August. They plan to tear down the shacks that have stood since the 1970s and are home to about 100 people, including about 20 children, year-round. Kathy Meyer said up to 125 people live there during peak season.

Farming experiment

The Meyers plan to select impoverished farmers to live in the cottages and manage individual plots of land, selling their products at a farm store on the Camp Azul property on Southwest Scholls Ferry Road seven miles west of Oregon 217 .

"It's sort of an incubator where people can start farming on a very small scale," said Andre Meyer, who is a wheat and cattle farmer in Lexington, a small town in eastern Oregon. He and his wife split their time between there and Camp Azul.

Giving farmers more entrepreneurial license is a good idea but workers should be moved into cities where they are closer to services, said Peter Henley of the Community and Shelter Assistance Corporation, a Newberg-based nonprofit that aims to develop better housing for farmworkers and other low-income people.

"From a public policy standpoint, we best serve the farmworkers by getting them inside urban growth boundaries, inside city limits," he said.

But Henley said he likes the direction the Meyers are taking their camp, in terms of providing a safe, clean and affordable option.

"Camp Azul has long been the poster child of camps that you don't want to house farmworkers in," he said. "And it's good that they're taking it upon themselves to reformat the thing and do something different."

The shacks at Camp Azul  have no indoor plumbing, residents instead sharing lavatories and bath houses. Blocks of cabins share water spigots. The new cottages would offer amenities in each unit.

"Our intent from the moment we bought it was to rebuild the camp and rebuild the housing, which is clearly substandard," Kathy Meyer said. Andre Meyer said he does not know how many people will live in the 14 cottages at the farm, but it will undoubtedly drop from the 80 who live on the marionberry and grass seed farm now.

Approval a tough process

He and his wife will "go it alone" if they don't secure outside funding, but in that case would have to "scale it down considerably," he said. The couple bought the property in 2004, after the Washington County Housing Authority tried but failed to obtain the camp.

Getting approval for development was also an arduous process. The Meyers submitted their application three times, the first two returned as incomplete. Meyer said he and his wife spent $100,000 on planning and legal fees.

"Most people aren't going to spend that much money and fight this long to get something done," he said.

Meyer said creating a small community of impoverished farmers was his plan since they bought the land. He said the camp will no longer serve as a pickup point for day workers.

"My particular interest was in organic farming and growing for local farmers markets and so on," he said. "I thought the situation lends itself to forming a more communelike group of growers who can collaborate and help each other out and share equipment."

In addition to marionberries, Meyer envisions the farmers growing more intensive vegetable gardens to stock the planned on-site market.