Good help is hard to find.
As with many cliches, this one carries a lot of truth. Amador County is a small but typical player in an agricultural industry that often requires hard labor and long hours under adverse conditions. Areas of the county have become a significant part of the romantic world of California vineyards and wineries, with more than 30 wineries and tasting rooms dotting the rustic, rolling hills. Behind the glamour lies an abundance of hard work, requiring hundreds of workers toiling in vineyards under a glaring sun or in a chilling winter drizzle.
It is these workers that can be difficult to find and keep. One way to accomplish this is by providing adequate housing.
One such vineyard owner is local Shenandoah Valley grape grower, rancher, agricultural businessman and former county supervisor Ken Deaver, who provides some housing for his farm workers and would like to provide more.
Deaver estimates the number of workers needed during busy agricultural seasons in the county at 300. His own family operations include vineyards, orchards and the Amador Flower Farm. "We have between 20 and 60 workers," he said, "depending on the time of year."
When people envision farm labor housing, images of shacks, shanties and overcrowded bunkhouses shimmering in the summer sun may come to mind. Deaver's workers live in landscaped, well-kept and surely well-appreciated solid modular buildings. This raises the question of where and how the rest of the workers live.
Farm labor housing has been a political football since the 1960s, when Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta made significant progress in improving the conditions and, ultimately, the lives of thousands of hard-working farm laborers.
Mike Davis, author of the 2006 book "Planet of Slums," wrote, "What's happened in California agriculture, in the last 20 years, is that farmers no longer provide places for their work forces to live. So the farm belt of California is full of people living in their cars or living in beat-up trailers and some even sleeping outside."
Although there is widespread agreement among people of various political persuasions that there is a need for decent, affordable housing for farm workers, creation of such housing remains difficult and rare.
Government programs have come and gone as the political winds have blown around them. Compared to California's millions of acres of farmland and a reported 40,000 farms, Amador County is a miniscule pocket of need for farm labor housing.
In the Plymouth area, an organization called Mercy Housing California purchased 20 lots in the Hawksview Subdivision, north of the city's main business area. After Habitat for Humanity, MHC is the second largest producer of self-help housing in the United States. Since 1967, it has assisted more than 2,200 families in building their own homes.
The late county supervisor Mario Biagi, in a 2002 letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stated that the lack of affordable housing stock in Amador County was of great concern. He reported that Mercy Housing California had purchased 20 lots in Plymouth with the intention to build self-help homes with funding provided by the USDA Department of Rural Development. This project was approved, funded and completed, and now provides housing for some of the county's agricultural workers and their families.
Given the seasonal, intermittent nature of agricultural work in the county, farm workers have historically driven from places in the Central Valley - Stockton, Lodi or Sacramento. This is changing rapidly. "With the price of fuel," Deaver said, "more and more workers want to live near work."
The county's updated general plan housing element, approved in 2005, uses 3.3 as an average farm worker family size. Using that multiplier times Deaver's 300 worker estimate, Amador County would need farm labor housing for nearly 1,000.
Changes in the housing element call for increasing the farm labor housing density on agricultural parcels in the county.
Although the new housing element was approved by the Amador County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors, its provisions have not been fully integrated into the general plan.
In the meantime, Deaver has one farm labor dwelling sitting vacant. Its fate will not be decided until the supervisors' meeting on Aug. 19, when the agenda will include Deaver's appeal of a planning commission denial of his request for a boundary line adjustment.
A variety of state and federal programs provide funding for farm worker housing. The California Department of Housing and Community Development, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture offer funding for farm worker housing.
The Joe Serna Jr. Farm worker Housing Grant Program provides grants and loans for farm labor housing, as do the federal HUD Home Investment Partnership Program and State Community Development Block Grant Program.
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