A lifetime of moving: Migrant worker families share their struggles, hopes for stable housing

Every six months, Hector Arriola and Natalia Beltran travel between their housing unit at the Davis Migrant Center and their home in Sinaloa, Mexico. 

For the last 12 years, the couple and their 19-year-old granddaughter have done the more than 1,500-mile trip roughly 24 times by vehicle. Arriola said it costs them about $800 one way. 

“We lived for a time in Sacramento while I worked in construction,” Arriola, 65, explained. However, the 2008 recession caused him to lose his job and his house.

“I was looking for jobs, but we had to leave,” he said. 

They were told about the Davis Migrant Center by a friend and decided to give it a try. The center, like most of California’s 24 migrant housing centers, is only open between April and October leaving migrants with two choices the rest of the year: find temporary housing and another job, or move back to their home country until the next farming season. 

However, a controversial migrant farmworker housing rule requires the head of household to live at least 50 miles away from the migrant center for three months after families move out for the season. That means that even if families choose to stay, they’d still need to uproot their lives and move to another community.

Additionally, Beltran, 66, said they pay less than $400 a month for a three-bedroom unit at the center. That kind of affordable housing is simply not available during the off season.  According to Zillow, the median rent of an apartment in Davis is $2,500. In Sacramento, it’s $2,000. That’s a more than 625% and a 500% increase, respectively.

“We have a daughter in Sacramento, but when the landlord sees us, he tells her, ‘$50 more for mom and dad,’” Beltran said in Spanish. “Then we leave not to give her a battle to fight. That’s why we don’t stay with her.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in late September that paves the way for migrant farm workers with school-aged children to be able to live at migrant centers year-round. 

Assembly Bill 2240 states that migrant farm worker families with at least one school-aged child may be exempted from the requirement of residing outside a 50-mile radius of the labor center during the off-season. To qualify, families need to provide the migrant farm labor center proof of their child’s enrollment in the local school district. 

The bill will also require the Department of Housing and Community Development  — which oversees the Office of Migrant Services — to look into the feasibility and impact of transitioning housing units at migrant centers to year-round availability for families that wish to stay. 

That’s a big deal for migrant workers living in Yolo County migrant centers where half of all families have at least one school-aged child — which is considered to be 6 to 18 years olds in California — living with them. 

School disruption 

Mercedes Garcia, 70, has lived at the Davis Migrant Center six months at a time for the last 40 years. She said that schedule was especially challenging when it came to making sure her daughter, who is now 27, could get a good education.

“I go to my house in Mexico every time this place closes,” Garcia said in Spanish. “I would take my daughter with me every year until she got into high school so she wouldn’t fall behind so much. She did all of elementary and middle school going back and forth.”

One of the main reasons the bill was created was to address the disruption that moving creates for children of migrant families. 

“I never went to a parent-teacher meeting and I never went to her first day of school because I couldn’t drive,” Garcia explained, referring to her daughter. “She couldn’t do summer school to get caught up because there was no one to drop her off or pick her up. Luckily, she persevered and made it through school.” 

According to data from the Yolo County Housing Authority, 49% of families living at the Davis, Dixon and Madison migrant centers have at least one school-age child living with them — that’s about 200 children in all.

Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula authored the bill. He said data from the Parlier Unified School District that found disparities in educational outcomes between students living at farmworker centers who had their school years disrupted and the general population of students helped inform his legislation. 

According to the data, a higher percentage of migrant students between third and 11th grade performed below average in English and math state assessments. Eleventh graders had the starkest difference in English proficiency; only 17% performed at or above average compared with 24% of non-migrant students. For math, none of the 5th-grade migrant students performed at or above average in the state assessment. 

 

 

“Their data suggested that two out of three students were not reading at grade level and three out of four were not performing at math grade level,” Arambula stressed. “I believe that this legislation and allowing us to have the option to have more stability will improve those outcomes in the long run. It’s important not just for them and their family, but for California and our economy to have this stability so that these children can have opportunities in life.”

 

 

Despite the difficulties educating her daughter, Garcia said living at the Davis Migrant Center helped lift her out of poverty and provided her with free amenities like running water, electricity and washing machines.

“This center is really good for people who come here as migrants because apartments are so expensive, and I like it here,” she said referring to the center. “If they pass this, all those families with their young children will be able to just live here. It wouldn’t just be a migrant camp anymore, it would be normal housing.” 

However, she argued that the Office of Migrant Services should focus on improving the infrastructure of migrant centers, like adding air conditioning, to improve the quality of life for families choosing to live there year-round. 

Infrastructure, housing improvement costs unknown

Although all the migrant labor centers are owned by the Office of Migrant Services, local housing authorities and counties operate the centers through contracts. Ian Evans, executive director of the Yolo County Housing Authority, explained that while it is possible to transition the three centers they operate into year-round facilities, including the Davis center,  it won’t be cheap. 

“We will need much more operating funding if we’re operating a year-round program than a six to seven-month program,” Evans stressed. 

He noted that the centers are not set up for year-round use and some of the infrastructure, like its water and sewer systems, will need to be upgraded. 

“Having conversations with the city of Davis based on the proximity to that center and where the nearest main water line is for the city, it’s anticipated that it would cost between $9 and $12 million to connect our center in Davis to the city’s water system,” Evans said.  

Additionally, the center utilizes “sewer ponds” — a lagoon where wastewater is treated through natural and biochemical processes. Evans said these ponds fill up during the season and have time to lower when the center is empty. If centers transition to year-round availability, he said, the center will have to upgrade its sewer system as well. 

“Infrastructure like that would be critical to making them feasible from a site infrastructure maintenance component,” he said referring to the centers. 

Furthermore, Evans said the housing authority only receives state funding for the six months they’re open — April to October. Prior to the passage of the bill, centers needed to calculate operating expenses for any extension past the 180 day period and submit them to the Office of Migrant Services for approval. 

“In order to get their approval, we have to show that the rent we collect from any of the residents who are going to continue to stay during that extension period will cover our cost to operate for that extension period,” Evans said. 

All three centers extend for three to four weeks nearly every season, but only a quarter to half of the families stay during that period, he said. 

The Department of Housing and Community Development will need to create a report that includes potential negative consequences, including rent increases, to migrant farmworkers from converting centers to year-round housing. The report is due to the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development and the Senate Committee on Housing by July 1, 2027, according to the bill. 

However, the vague language concerning rent increases has concerned some migrant farm workers because it is unclear what the actual cost of implementing this bill will be. As of now, the Assembly Committee on Appropriations anticipates ongoing costs are expected to be somewhere between $500,000 and $1.2 million annually for increased staffing at the Department of Housing and Community Development alone.

Additionally, the committee anticipates general fund allocations up to $4 million annually by January 2031 for centers to cover the costs of increasing staffing at migrant centers, utility costs and deferred maintenance projects. These increased costs would all be happening at a time when the Legislative Analyst’s Office is expecting the General Fund to face a deficit in the tens of billions of dollars over the next few years. 

“We need more local affordable housing for farm workers year-round,” Evans said, prior to the passage of the bill. “We certainly have a goal here in Yolo to support more affordable farm-worker housing and just hope that the legislation isn’t written in a way that makes it really challenging to do that in a meaningful way.” 

Opposition to the bill

Although the bill is supported by notable organizations like Sacramento State University and Líderes Campesinas, it has been criticized by dozens of farmworkers from two migrant centers — Artesi III in French Camp and Harney Lane in Lodi. 

Nearly 100 farm workers from several migrant centers attended the mid-August Senate Standing Committee on Appropriations meeting to say they were against the bill. Although most simply voiced general opposition, some specified that they were concerned with rent increases or the possibility of the migrant program disappearing completely because of the bill. 

Harney Lane Migrant Center resident Ruby Cortez spoke against the bill saying she and her fellow residents were afraid of losing their homes.

“We are afraid of losing our homes, of losing the migrant program that supports our students,” she said in Spanish on Aug. 12. “We know that it is a special program designed for us, the farm workers.” 

Yet others who were against the bill seemingly contradicted that stance saying they were against the bill but support the idea of year-round housing for families who want it.

Miguel Angel Garibay, president of the Artesi III Migrant Center Board of Directors, explained that he and farm workers at his center oppose the bill largely because they were never told about the bill and the negative consequences that could come from this change. 

“This is for temporary farm workers, especially migrants,” Garibay argued, referring to the centers. “If you change it to year-round availability, the [migrant worker] program disappears and everything will change.” 

Garibay said that allowing permanent housing would lead to a preference of migrant workers who want to stay year-round over those who prefer moving away for the off-season. However, the option to stay is dependent on whether or not families have school-age children.

Instead, Garibay said that legislators should focus on adding infrastructure to existing units to make life easier for migrant workers while they’re here. 

“If they want to help us, let’s remodel them,” he said. “There are centers that don’t have air conditioning, heating or sufficient water. Let’s start there.” 

When asked why living at migrant centers year-round shouldn’t be an option for the families that want it, Garibay argued that students from his center don’t have a hard time with the current system and don’t have a hard time meeting their educational goals. 

However, Assemblyman Arambula disagreed with Garibay’s points. In regard to education, he cited data from the Parlier Unified School District that showed students of migrant farm workers have a significantly harder time than the general population of students. 

“I think we have to accept the reality of the demographics of farm workers who are living at the farm worker centers now,” Arambula stressed. “There was a time in the 1960s when predominantly migrant farm workers were single men. But today the demographics are much different and a good portion have families. What we wanted to do is to see those who currently are in the migrant farm working housing, if they are families, and make sure we were addressing their needs as well.”

Arambula said he understands concerns about the affordability of housing for migrant farm workers noting that they “barely have enough to put food on their table or keep the roof over the head that they have.” 

Yet, he confirmed that the Department of Housing and Community Development asked for flexibility in the legislation’s language just in case rent increases were needed. 

“It did not seem it was a tool that they were going to utilize or be considering early on,” Arambula said. 

When asked to specify exactly how much rent would increase, Pablo Espinoza, deputy director of communications for the department, said they do not have an estimate of the cost or impacts of expanding infrastructure for year-round housing at the centers.

What’s next? 

Arambula acknowledged that many of the farm workers’  misunderstandings regarding his bill were due to a lack of educational outreach. He visited some of the migrant centers that were opposed to the bill and created a “myths and facts sheet” in both English and Spanish as a way to address common concerns. 

“What was most effective for us was to hear those concerns and to incorporate it into amendments within the bill,” Arambula said. “We respected what they were adding to the conversation and felt that it was important for us to address what they were bringing forward. I’m glad that, at the end of the day, they removed their opposition.”

Arambula didn’t conduct any other outreach to let farm workers know about the bill and potential changes. But he said he plans on sending the myths and facts sheet to all centers now that the bill has been signed. 

Centers have the right to refuse transitioning to year-round availability if feedback from their residents shows they are opposed to it, according to Arambula. However, the legislation does not specify what percentage of people would need to be against the move to prevent that from happening. 

But Arambula said he believes California needs to continue investing in these facilities to ensure they are more habitable whether they’re available year-round or not. 

“We have people living in those places who oftentimes are struggling with housing conditions that should be improved,” he argued. 

One thing he said will help is a $10 million line item in this year’s climate bond that will focus on farm worker housing and weatherization. This money will help reduce electricity costs at migrant centers, which Arambula said would allow for more funds to address infrastructure needs.

“We’re going to need all of the housing that we have to be utilized to its utmost capacity while also working on building more housing and better housing, and we believe that our farm workers deserve that,” he remarked. 

Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

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