SALINAS, CA – Every year, farmers in this fertile valley are known as the “salad bowl of the world” and rely on tens of thousands of workers to harvest lush greens and juicy strawberries. But as local farm workers age and the Trump administration has decided to crack down on illegal workers, which has long been the backbone of California’s agricultural workers, more growers are looking for a legal channel to import foreign workers.
Under the federal H-2A visa program, farm employers can temporarily hire workers from other countries, as long as they show that they cannot hire sufficient domestic workers. Employers must provide housing, food and transportation to guest workers.
But in Monterey County, one of the more expensive parts of the country, the obligation to provide an explosive number of guest workers in appropriate housing was exacerbating the area’s affordable housing crisis. Growers and labor contractors had bought detached houses and motels. It is often a last resort residence for those on the homeless crisis, making housing even scarier for low-wage workers who live in the community all year round.
Migrant workers hired through fresh harvests choose romaine lettuce in King City.
For several large farm companies in the county, the solution was to personally fund the construction of new residential facilities for H-2A workers. Since 2015, local growers have invested their own capital and often their own land to build at least eight housing complexes for thousands of guest workers.
These do not resemble the crude barracks used to house Mexican guest workers known as Braceros decades ago. It’s also not a broken trailer related to H-2A program abuse. Rather, many of the new residential developments here are being built along the lines of modern multifamily townhomes, equipped with recreational areas and laundry facilities. Hurried to support the agricultural industry and increase the supply of the entire housing sector, county leaders have promoted the permitting process for such developments and cast support behind the efforts.
Some community members are skeptical of this approach. Neighbors have expressed concern about the impact of building large-scale housing developments, primarily for single men. Some supporters say that it is a serious fraud for growers to build housing for foreign guest workers, but farm workers who settled in the area years ago often stick to substandard buildings.
Along with his sons, Farel and Elias, Israel Francisco is one of the longtime Monterey County farm workers who have gathered at home with large families and roommates due to the lack of affordable housing.
“Growers are building housing for H-2A workers because they have the land and they have the money.
Farm workers in the country who moved decades ago and started their families and took root, do not directly benefit from their development. She said:
County supervisor Louis Alejo agreed that there was a need for more affordable housing for local farm workers, but called the grower-funded H-2A housing development “a victory for the community.”
“When we are providing housing to H-2A workers, it’s not exacerbating the housing crisis elsewhere in our community,” he said.
The key issue of the discussion is that many longtime farmers living in Monterey County are in the United States without permission, as true throughout California. At least half of California’s estimated 255,700 farmers have not been documented, according to UC Merced Research.
As the Trump administration focuses on overthrowing the US immigration system and deporting undocumented immigrants, California growers are rushing to stabilize labor supply through legal paths such as the H-2A visa program.
For years, farm workers advocates have expressed concern about the H-2A program, saying exploitation is ripe because the worker’s permission to stay in the country is tied to employers. And as long as the labor supply was adequate, many growers were reluctant to expand the program, as they required them to invest in federal compliant housing, often requiring them to pay higher wages to meet federal requirements of nearly $20 per hour.
But as the Trump administration vows to massive deportation and the growing number of undocumented immigrants taking into account “self-declarations,” labor sufficiency is suddenly becoming a problem.
Fresh Harvest founder Steve Scaroni speaks with Foreman Javier Patron as workers line up to wash their hands before returning to the job of harvesting lettuce in King City.
“If you get immigrant enforcement, you have corrupt crops on the ground,” said Steve Scaroni, founder of Imperial County-based Fresh Harvest, one of the nation’s largest companies to import guest workers.
Can Monterey County provide solutions to other parts of the state?
In 2015, Tanimura & Antle, one of the region’s largest agricultural companies, recruited Avila Construction Co. to build a home for 800 H-2A workers in the Spreckels community on the outskirts of Salinas.
Growers hoped the project would be built within a year, but this was “something unprecedented.” Because approval of the home was not possible anytime soon, according to Mike Avila, the owner of the construction company. However, Tanimura and Entre faced a dire situation. They were unable to hire a stable domestic workforce and put the crop at risk of a no-harvest if they did not invest in a plan to hire guest workers.
Some local residents have opposed the proposed development, citing the dangers of raising concerns about road congestion, with hundreds more men living in the area. However, the Supervisory Committee ultimately moved the project forward.
“We were very fortunate that these projects were being built and these fears didn’t come true,” Avila said. He noted that employers need to provide H-2A workers with bus or van transport, reducing the number of vehicles on the road.
After a day of work, the immigrant farm workers will return to the H-2A guest worker residential complex in Greenfield, Monterey County.
The Tanimura & Antle complex has opened up new models of guest worker housing in the area, giving the company an edge. When Thanimura & Entre built the complex, they were able to recruit immigrant farm workers from other states, Avila said. It wasn’t until recently that the company began housing H-2A workers at its facilities.
Meanwhile, Avila has become a go-to construction company for grower-funded employee housing. The company usually builds dorm-style townhomes on land owned by growers. Today, the company is showing its annual average project.
Migrant workers relax in community rooms on the remodeled H-2A residential site run by King City’s Fresh Harvest. The site has dorm-style rooms with up to 14 workers.
The fresh harvest transformed a tomato packaging plant in Monterey County into clean, livable homes for around 360 immigrant farmers.
The number of H-2A visas certified for Monterey County has been swelling since the rise in housing developments funded by its first grower.
The Federal Labor Bureau has risen nearly 60% since 2018, surpassing the county’s 8,100 H-2A visa in 2023, up nearly 60% from 2018, according to a report by the UC Davis Labor and Community Center and Community Center. Compared to other California counties, Monterey had the highest number of visa certifications in the thousands.
Migrant workers were hired through King City’s fresh harvest, harvest and bags of romaine lettuce.
Some farm employers had to be creative to meet housing requirements.
There are fresh harvest homes somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 guest workers across the United States, but one of Scaroni’s favorite projects is in King City, a shuttered tomato packaging factory that sat in the sky until 2016 when he asked staff about converting it into a farm worker’s home.
“The city thought we were crazy,” he recalls. “But there was something about it that said, ‘I think we can make it work.’ ”
Today, Meyer Farmworker Housing at Fresh Harvest has space for around 360 workers. The company has transformed the so-called aging room where tomatoes were once stored into a dorm room each houses 14 workers.
The dorm rooms are lined with lockers and bunk beds, and workers will decorate them with colorful blankets. The shared bathroom features long lines of stainless steel sinks and showers, allowing workers to relax in community rooms lined with sofas, laundry machines and TVs.
Company officials are also promoting the impact on downtown King City. Broadway Street was discontinued in store as fresh harvests began leasing properties. Now, La Plaza’s bakeries open before sunrise, serving workers heading into the fields, and restaurants line the streets.
Christina Cruz Mendoza recently moved her store, Christina’s clothes and more to Broadway. She sells a lot of clothes and gear worn by farm workers, and says workers who live nearby made a huge difference in her sales.
“We are all colleagues and we all respect each other,” Julio Cesar said of the guest workers taking part in the H-2A visa program through Fresh Harvest in King City.
Giulio Cesar, who has worked at Fresh Harvest for six seasons, said he likes the Meyer facility because of its cleanliness and how cool it is. He and other workers who live there often head to downtown after working in the broccoli fields.
“We are all colleagues and we all respect each other,” he said. “We sometimes go to the store and shop. Sometimes we relax and go for walks.”
Even if Monterey County succeeds in building model homes for H-2A guest workers, the homes for thousands of longtime farm workers who are not part of the Visa program continue to stagnate.
A 2018 report from California’s Rural Institute found communities in Salinas Valley in Monterey County and in the Pajaro Valley in nearby Santa Cruz County needed more than 45,000 new housing units to mitigate the serious overcrowding of farmworker households. However, local governments need to tie funding together to build such developments without the investment of growers. This can be challenging for rural communities.
That leaves many farm families struggling to pay rent while earning $16.50 an hour while earning minimum wage. This situation is particularly severe in Salinas, with the city council recently voted to abolish a short-lived ordinance that reduced annual rent increases in multifamily homes built prior to February 1995.
Amalia Francisco, a 32-year-old immigrant from southern Mexico, shares Salinas’ three-bedroom home with her three siblings and other roommates. Often, it costs at least three to four families to cover $5,000 in rent per month, she said.
Francis picks strawberries about $800 a week. In other words, if you’re lucky enough to spend 40 hours. Her final salary was only $200, she said. She feels she doesn’t have enough money to cover some of the rent along with food and other expenses.
Israel Francis enters Salinas’s house, which she shares with her sister Amalia and other roommates, covering rent of $5,000 each month.
Farm worker Aquilino Vasquez pays $2,400 a month to live in a two-bedroom apartment with his wife, three daughters and stepfather. They lived there for 10 years, but over the past two years Vasquez said he was frustrated with the way he manages the property.
When the black mold appeared on the ceiling, he said he was told he was responsible for cleaning it. He says he needs to complain to the city to install smoke detectors, and the rats said they bit the bathroom and kitchen walls.
Vasquez, an immigrant from Oaxaca, said it was unfair that the well-being of his family was at risk while quality housing was provided to guest workers.
“They’re building, they’re building, they’re building, but for contract workers,” he said.
This article is part of the Times Equity Report initiative funded by the James Irvine Foundation, which examines the challenges faced by low-income workers and efforts to address economic disparities in California.
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