SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Sacramento County Planning and Environmental Review staff are discussing a potential zoning code amendment that could increase the amount of places for farmworker housing.
Among the goals of the amendment is adding a new zoning district to the list of places allowing farmworker housing, and allowing for larger housing to be built to accommodate larger families.
Areas within the zoning district — known as AR 10 — are clustered mostly near Florin in South Sacramento.
Planning and Environmental Review staff say the California Department of Housing and Community Development encouraged county officials to allow farmworker housing in more areas.
Staff plan to bring the housing amendment proposal to the County Board of Supervisors for a vote by September.
INTERACTIVE MAP: Blue patches represent the new areas farmworker housing would be allowed if Planning and Environmental Review amendments are passed by the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.
Farmworker housing concerns 'nothing new'
Farmworkers are not the type of employees to raise concerns, according to advocate Marco Cesar Lizarraga. He says many are undocumented and fear deportation, while others fear losing their jobs in retaliation.
Lizarraga is the executive director of La Cooperative Campesina de California, a nonprofit aimed at improving the quality of life for the state's migrant and seasonal farmworkers.
"(Housing) has always been a problem, it's nothing new," he said. "When we first came to this country, we worked the fields. I remember us sleeping in a garage that was almost falling like the Tower of Pisa, but a lady who felt sorry for us used to rent it to our family."
As more and more farmworkers permanently settle in one area, the need for nearby housing becomes more necessary.
According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, less than 59% of farm workers lived or worked with family in 1990. In 2012, the number jumped to 75%.
With the current cost and demand of housing across California, low-income farmworkers struggle to find accommodations.
"Because of NIMBYism and because of practicality, you have to seek more outside urban areas for farmworker housing," said Lizarraga. "On average, most farmworkers at one point during the year are going to be commuting 50 miles to work."
Farmworkers' plight
Veteran San Joaquin Valley farmworker turned advocate Luis Magaña says people come from cities like Napa and Fresno to work in the nearby fields.
He says renting hotel rooms with entire families was not unusual, especially in the aftermath of the World War II-era Bracero program that saw tens of thousands of Mexican migrants come to California.
"Many workers had to endure overcrowded housing, multiple families in a single home, if they wanted work," said Magaña.
He says the plight of the farmworker deserves more attention, but the attention mostly comes during times of tragedy.
After a January mass shooting left seven people dead across two farms in Half Moon Bay, the city's Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez said farm workers were paraded as heroes during the COVID-19 lockdowns, but aren't often treated as such.
"Now what we have is being exposed, our farmworking community's living conditions," he said in January. "Many of you come to our community for the pumpkins and ignore the farm workers — not today. We're not ignoring anybody."
Dozens of people and their families working on a mushroom farm were involved in the Half Moon Bay shooting and some said living conditions were bad. Even a shipping container was used as a home.
San Mateo County officials announced June 1 they received a $5 million state grant to prioritize expanding housing for farmworkers displaced by the mass shooting.
"It's a shame it took something like a tragic shooting for people to pay attention to the living conditions," said Magaña.
Sacramento County Planning staff will wrap up their public outreach process on the housing amendment after a Wednesday meeting with the Agricultural Advisory Commission.
According to a county planning spokesperson, the housing amendment passage would be the minimum changes necessary to bring Sacramento County's zoning code to California's standards.
