By The California Applicants’ Attorneys Association | Jul 22, 2024
The number of agricultural guest workers in California has nearly tripled in the last six years and state regulators have struggled mightily to ensure that they have safe housing. Antonio Bravo, a guest worker from Michoacán, Mexico, experienced this firsthand when he was housed in deplorable conditions in a Salinas hotel in 2020. The hotel was infested with rats and cockroaches, and Bravo and his roommates had to take turns sleeping in the only comfortable bed. When they complained about bedbugs, they were told to buy their own insecticide. Despite complaints to state regulators, no violations were found, and conditions did not improve.
This situation is part of a larger problem in California, where the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is understaffed, with only three full-time inspectors overseeing employer-provided dwellings across the state. Although the department found over 1,000 violations in 2022, it issued no citations. Moreover, there have been several instances where inspectors awarded permits without visiting the sites. The lack of enforcement has led to ongoing poor living conditions for many workers, like Bravo, who eventually had to rely on legal action to seek improvements.
Most H2A workers do not report housing violations due to fear of being blacklisted and effectively barred from returning the following season. Advocates argue for more regular and unannounced inspections and for workers to be interviewed anonymously. Despite California’s stringent employee housing laws, the state rarely issues penalties, preferring to charge a reinspection fee. This approach has not been effective, as many employers continue to violate housing standards. The lack of severe consequences fails to deter repeated violations, putting workers at continued risk.
The rise in H2A workers, coupled with insufficient inspections, means many workers live in unsafe conditions. This has prompted calls for better cooperation between state and federal agencies to enforce housing standards more effectively. There are, however, examples of good practices. Balletto Vineyards in Santa Rosa provides its guest workers with decent housing and various worker benefits, as negotiated by the United Farm Workers. Such examples demonstrate that it is possible to treat workers humanely while maintaining a profitable business. Nonetheless, until more employers follow such models and state regulators enforce housing laws more strictly, the housing situation for many agricultural guest workers in California is likely to remain dire.
