At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, overcrowded dwellings turned into COVID-19 clusters, hitting agricultural workers disproportionately hard.
Living with complete strangers in overcrowded dwellings, living out of cars, or subletting garages and backyard sheds: these are the conditions where countless farmworker families dwell in California.
“These are the living conditions you would find in a third-world country, not the fifth largest economy, such as ours, here in the State of California,” said Assemblymember Robert Rivas (D-Salinas).
“This community has done backbreaking work to ensure that we all have food on our tables, and they deserve better,” said Rivas, who hosted the Assembly Housing Working Group on the Central Coast in early October, a series of regional roundtables to discuss housing needs for agriculture workers.
Ernestina Solorio knows firsthand the hardships faced by farmworkers in accessing decent and affordable housing. She earns slightly more than $2,000 per month picking strawberries. She lives in Watsonville with her four children and two grandchildren, all in the same three-bedroom house.