At its June 1 meeting, the county Planning Commission unanimously approved a conditional use permit for Betteravia Farms to build a 30-unit farmworker housing structure, called Curletti Ranch, on company land outside Santa Maria.
The structure will house up to 600 guest laborers working for Betteravia Farms under H-2A, a federal program for temporary foreign farmworkers. Despite ultimate support from commissioners, the item sparked some controversy—especially surrounding a letter from the Sheriff’s Office to the Planning Commission.
The letter essentially requested that Betteravia Farms staff Curletti Ranch with resident advisors to ensure the tenants behave themselves.
“I was actually offended by it, to tell you the truth, and I probably wouldn’t agree to that condition,” Commissioner Daniel Blough said of the Sheriff’s Office’s letter at the Planning Commission meeting. “When I read their letter for the first time, I went like, ‘Jeez, it’s kind of racist.’ We don’t have that kind of condition for anything else that we approve.”
Commissioner Cecilia Brown agreed: “We can approve an affordable housing project where we have 1,000 people living in it, and we don’t put conditions like this attached to that project. It just feels sort of discriminatory to me.”
Commander Craig Bonner appeared via video at the meeting to defend the Sheriff’s Office’s request.
“Our concern is that if we don’t have some safeguards in place, that the project could have the potential for negative impacts,” Bonner said.
Betteravia Farms CEO Joe Leonard said of the hundreds of H-2A employees his company has contracted, only three have been sent home for misbehavior, and each instance had to do with nonviolent drug use. Still, he said he had no problem with Bonner’s request.
“We really have had a great workforce,” Leonard said, “but I think it makes sense for us to do the best job we can to mitigate.”
Most public commenters spoke out in support of Curletti Ranch, citing increasing domestic farmworker shortages as the main reason growers require assistance from H-2A workers. These supporters included Claire Wineman of the county Grower-Shipper Association, Santa Maria Mayor Alice Patino, and Jesse Manriquez, owner of employment agency Rancho Harvest.
But others took issue with the housing project’s format: 20 bunkhouses placed on a lot miles outside of town, full of guest workers without their own cars. Hazel Davalos, community organizing director at the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), said, “This is not housing. This is a labor camp.”
She said it was wrong to place employees in a situation in which they can’t leave their residence without help from their employer.
“This labor camp is being placed far away from residential areas, the way we would put a sewage plant, a landfill, or a jail, but these are hundreds of human beings,” Davalos said. “The workers are incredibly isolated.”
She said more domestic laborers would be willing to work on farms if they received better treatment from the agriculture companies.
“If growers want more workers and expect the children of farmworkers to want to work in the fields, they should pay and treat people better,” Davalos said. “If they’re not willing to do that and want to bring in H-2A workers, they should provide decent housing, not farm labor camps in the middle of nowhere.”
Despite some opposition from the public, the plan passed through the commissioners with a 5-0 vote—even from Blough, who disliked the sheriff’s condition.
“There’s no doubt in my mind this is going to be another first-class project that they’re going to create, so I’m happy to support it,” Blough said.
The housing project will unfold in three phases. Principal Planner David Swenk said first-phase construction could begin by September.
This article appears in Jun 9-16, 2016.