ALAMOSA — The San Luis Valley is reliant upon a strong agricultural economy to thrive. Farmers rely on the expertise of reliable, hardworking farmworkers to keep their operations running and profitable. And farmworkers rely on having quality housing to call home for themselves and sometimes their families while they’re living and working in an area.
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ALAMOSA — The San Luis Valley is reliant upon a strong agricultural economy to thrive. Farmers rely on the expertise of reliable, hardworking farmworkers to keep their operations running and profitable. And farmworkers rely on having quality housing to call home for themselves and sometimes their families while they’re living and working in an area.
With that symbiotic relationship in mind, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Housing service recently awarding a $1.9 million grant to the San Luis Valley Farmworker Housing Corporation in Center which is an investment not just in farm workers’ well-being, but in the entire community and economy where they work.
Raymond Hurtado, long time executive director of SLV Farmworkers Corporation, summarized it best. “They put food on our table and we put a roof over their head,” he says.
The funding will be used to make improvements and continued maintenance of Tierra Nueva Dormitory. The residential building, part of an extraordinary complex in Center that was the brainchild of Board President Michael Trujillo in 1997, contains 72 apartments with the capacity to house 216 people. As many as 500 people will live in the dormitory over the course of a year.
“Each apartment is really like a room in a dormitory,” explains Hurtado. It consists of a large room with enough space to sleep three people, a place for slow cookers and a bathroom shared with the renters next door.
Hurtado states that the workers are hired by farmers in the area where potatoes, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, canola and cauliflower are grown. Some of those crops have been automated but many of them are still planted, weeded and picked by hand. The farm workers are also not part of the H-2A Visa program; all of them are either citizens or residents. The Tierra Nueva Dormitory is a significant improvement over what some have experienced in the past, he says. “Before, a lot of farm workers – maybe as many as twenty - were living in one room. They were in substandard living conditions that wasn’t really safe because there was a lot of crime. We don’t have any problem with that here. People are safe.”
The renters are also a very diverse group. “We have couples, families with kids and sometimes people who are solo.” The people who live at Tierra Nueva also pay rent, he says, at a rate of 15% of their income with the USDA subsidizing the rest. When asked about wages, Hurtado says farm workers make minimum wage, which is currently about $14.40 an hour. Given the ongoing difficulty in hiring experienced farm workers, the value their work ethic and expertise brings to the local industry is immense. And the affordable housing is an absolutely crucial part of the whole set up.
The apartments really feel like home to many of the people, he says. “Some of the farm workers will live here for maybe up to a year, depending upon the job. Right now, people are working in the potato warehouses. But others will live here for maybe five months and then move to the next place and the next place after that on the circuit. It depends upon what crop they specialize in.” “Circuit” is shorthand for farm workers fitting into the growing cycle of whatever crop they work. As a result, Hurtado will often see the same people year after year as they come to Center on their circuit.
The Tierra Nueva Dormitory is part of a larger facility that includes 25 family units with one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, a community kitchen where all are welcome – farm workers, farmers, locals. “I think it’s really important for people to have that ability to come together.” The campus also includes a day care for migrant children.
As Raymond Hurtado describes the model of the housing program, it becomes abundantly clear that it’s a very unique situation not offered in many other places. And that is just one of the reasons that the funding from the USDA was so greatly appreciated.
“It will make us affordable for probably 20 years into the future,” he says. “Affordable labor means affordable food. And that’s good for everyone.”