More Housing for Migrants of Napa Vineyards
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
T. HELENA, Calif., Sept. 19 ‹ This is the season of abundance in the Napa
Valley, when the scent of crushed grapes infuses the air, and the porch of
the Catholic church becomes a makeshift home for some 45 migrant workers
waiting for the reds. They call the porch Los Pinos, after Mexico's
presidential palace.
Advertisement
This is the moment when the golden light of autumn casts two Napas into high
relief: the one of visitors luxuriating in deep-tissue massages and Frette
linens, the other of laborers sleeping along the riverbank, under bridges,
in vineyards, in packed garages and in parked cars, the windows foggy with
their breath.
It has been this way for years in the Napa Valley, where thousands of
migrant farmworkers, almost all of them Mexican, arrive each year to work
the gemlike vineyards, finding plenty of jobs but few roofs or beds.
But this year, many of the workers making their way to the harvest ‹
estimates range from 2,500 to 4,500 ‹ are beginning to see signs of change.
At the base of Rutherford Hill, for example, a yurt village for 40 migrant
workers ‹ inspired by the domed tents of Mongolian nomads ‹ was recently
erected by the county in a remote lakeside picnic area.
"In Mexico, we sleep in the meadows," said Juan Chavez, 36, a camp chef from
Michoacan. "You have to sleep where the work is."
Off the Silverado Trail, where semis bearing grapes barrel down oak allées,
a 60-bed camp made of rammed earth and called the Stonebridge Farm Workers
Center is rising on eight acres donated by the Joseph Phelps Vineyards. The
$3.2 million center, financed by the state, the county and the Napa Valley
Vintners Association, is the first of possibly five new camps in the valley.
The construction can be traced to a striking political shift. Last spring,
in a move some say is a national model, county residents approved Measure L,
which loosened long-sacrosanct zoning restrictions against development on
agricultural land to permit the building of farmworker housing. The measure
calls for up to five camps to provide temporary shelter for up to 300
farmworkers. This month, a majority of the valley's 1,900 vineyard owners,
representing some 44,400 acres, voted to tax themselves $7.76 per acre to
help pay for and operate the new housing.
The demand for worker housing is in many ways a distinctly Napa problem.
While 75 percent of California wine grapes are picked by machine, roughly
the same percentage in the valley is picked by hand. Workers here brave
porch floors for hourly wages that on average are 9 percent higher than
elsewhere in the state: up to $100 on a good picking day.
A study by the University of California at Davis found that the number of
beds for farmworkers fell from 400 in the 1980's to 250 in the 1990's. The
county has 176 beds in four public camps, including the yurt village,
managed by the nonprofit California Human Development Corporation; seven
camps with about 60 beds are privately owned.
The harvest season extends from mid-August, when the fields are heavy with
sauvignon blanc and grapes to use for champagne, to late October, when the
late-ripening cabernet grapes crisscross the hills at improbable vertical
angles. Increasingly, migrant workers like Salvador Servin, 62, a resident
of the Calistoga Farm Worker Center, the county's oldest camp, arrive early
in the season. Mr. Servin can make $12.50 an hour during the harvest, paying
$10 a day for a room shared with two others and three meals. During the
September and October peak, a typical worker picks for four to five hours a
day, in the cooler weather of early morning, said Philip Martin, a professor
of agricultural economics at the University of California at Davis.
The Calistoga camp opens Jan. 16 and can be full by March 1. "Then I have to
send them away," said Angel Calderon, 50, the site manager, who sends money
home to Timbinal in Guanajuato. "If the other camps are full, I tell them to
go to the church," he said. "These people need to eat, they need to rest, to
take a shower, to do laundry. It's very, very hard."
Increasingly, demand for workers extends beyond the harvest. It reached a
critical point two years ago, when phylloxera led to the replanting of
Napa's vineyards.
Most vintners replanted at higher density, with about 1,200 vines per acre
rather than 500 to 600. "Now there were more vines to prune, more
sophisticated and complex trellising techniques, more hand-suckering and
leaf-pulling," said Tom Shelton, president and chief executive of Phelps
Vineyards. "More vines equal more labor. It's not just a harvest issue
anymore."
As grape acreage rose, the housing for pickers became scarce. Rising land
values, corporate ownership and, some say, more housing regulations led to
the closing of camps.
Image has also been a factor, said Ruben Oropeza, the county environmental
enforcement officer, whose father was a manager of a migrant camp. "You're
building a winery for tourism," he said. "So why would you want a little
Tijuana next to it?" Some of the 18 private camps that have closed in recent
years have been subsumed by wineries. One is now a gym for a wealthy family,
Mr. Oropeza said. Another, which formerly housed 60 workers, is "a palatial
house you could put on the front page of Sunset magazine."
The housing shortage, Professor Martin said, was a sharp contrast to "the
nice, pretty little valley with the Mercedes pulling up."
Msgr. John Brenkel, the pastor of St. Helena Roman Catholic Church and a
leading housing advocate, said, "Here in the valley we've practiced economic
apartheid," adding, "It behooves us to level the playing field."
The new Stonebridge center, which will have a communal garden and a soccer
field, is expected to be finished by next harvest. Rosa Segura, chairwoman
of the county's Migrant Farmworker Housing Committee, said that the passage
of Measure L was a major improvement but that the real challenge was to get
more land donated for new camps. "There will always be overcrowding," she
said, "and landlords who seize the opportunity to put 10 men in a
one-bedroom apartment."
Meanwhile, there are stopgap measures like the yurt village, which was moved
this year from Yountville, about a mile from the celebrated French Laundry
restaurant, to a wooded site near Lake Hennessey.
The 10 yurts, tents on wooden platforms housing four men each, were paid for
by $130,000 in private donations. Ilene Jacobs, director of litigation for
California Rural Legal Assistance, a nonprofit organization, said the yurts
sent the wrong message. "It's one thing for vacationers on the Oregon
coast," she said. "It's another thing to say it's adequate housing for
farmworkers."
Our Towns; Even in Crisis, Finding Room For Outsiders (October 10, 2001) $
Mount Kisco Agrees to Extend Ban on Bias Against Hispanics (February 8,
2001) $
Not Just a Roof, but Roots for a Season (October 26, 2000) $
Immigrants Rebuild a City That Others Fled (February 21, 2000) $
Doing research? Search the archive for more than 500,000 articles:
Wake up to the world with home delivery of The New York Times newspaper.
Click Here for 50% off.
Home | Back to National | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy
