Santa Rosa area farmworker housing project underway

A new farmworker housing complex is underway just north of Santa Rosa.

Construction on the 30-unit project started last week on nearly two acres off Old Redwood Highway near Airport Boulevard, west of Larkfield. It’s expected to be completed within a year and will include 30 two-bedroom apartments for low-income families working in agriculture.

California Human Development, a Santa Rosa-based nonprofit that provides assistance and outreach to farmworkers, low-income families and others in the North Bay and Central Valley, received $11 million in federal, state and local funding for the project. It also received donations from various organizations, including the Sonoma County Grape Growers Foundation and Jackson Family Wines & Enterprises.

“A lot of people stepped up,” said Chris Paige, the nonprofit’s chief executive officer. “They realize how important (farmworker) housing is for sustainability.”

He said there’s a “tremendous” need for affordable housing, particularly in the North Coast. Farmworkers typically make about $18,000 to $20,000 a year and many spend more than half of their income on housing, Paige said. Thanks to a subsidy from the Department of Agriculture, California Human Development will be able to cap rent at 30 percent of families’ incomes, he said.

Efren Carrillo, chairman of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, said in a statement that the project “offers a significant solution” to the area’s housing problem.

“Many of those who work the vineyards and fields of our county live in crowded, substandard conditions,” he said.

The complex will be named the Ortiz Family Plaza, after one of California Human Development’s founders, George Ortiz. It’ll include a playground, garden spaces and a community center, where the nonprofit plans to offer English-language and financial literacy classes, citizenship workshops, mentoring programs and other services.

“This is a wonderful thing,” Ortiz said while watching construction crews work on the site Tuesday. “But it doesn’t solve the problem.”

Ortiz, a longtime Sonoma County resident who has spent decades working on improving conditions for farmworkers across Northern California, was referring to the larger problem of insufficient affordable housing. But the lower rents will allow families to set aside money for other necessities, such as food and medicine, he said, and the project will provide more stability for their children, many of whom will no longer have to sleep on the floor, as he did when he was a child working the fields with his migrant family.

“They’re going to have their own bedroom,” Ortiz said in Spanish.

Paige said they expect to start taking applications from potential tenants sometime in February or March. To be eligible, tenants must be considered low income, work in agriculture and have authorization to work in the U.S. legally, Paige said.

Plans also call for a second phase, which could include an additional 15 to 20 units just south of the current site, he said. They’re working on finding funding for that part of the project, which they hope to begin building in 2018.

Ortiz called the project and its funding a “mini miracle.” He said, “It’s so complex what California Human Development has done, how it wired this project together.”

Paige said his organization first applied for the $2 million grant and ?$1 million low-interest rate loan they received from the USDA in 2009. He said they planned to build the apartment complex in Healdsburg, which had earmarked redevelopment dollars for the project. Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislators then dissolved redevelopment agencies in 2012. They lost the money and that set the project behind, Paige said.

However, the USDA stuck with the nonprofit until it could secure other monies to complete the project, he said. That’s when they heard about the Old Redwood property, owned by Marv Soiland, who has since died, from now-Sen. Mike McGuire, Paige said. The land already was zoned for affordable housing a year earlier, he added.

Paige said some residents have raised concerns about the project. They’re worried farmworkers will be constantly moving in and out of the complex. That won’t be the case, Paige contended.

There are still misconceptions in the community that all farmworkers are single men who migrate up and down the state following the harvests, he said. His agency partnered with the county’s health department to conduct a study, which found that 88 percent of the nearly 300 farmworkers surveyed lived year-round in Sonoma County.

More than 70 percent had families, according to the study, which was released this past fall.

Paige said these families already are integrated into the community and have children enrolled in local schools.

“We expect a very stable population once they move in,” Paige said.

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @eloisanews.