With nearly half the dwellings that house California's hired farmworkers overcrowded and many not even intended for human habitation, policy changes are desperately needed to increase the supply of safe and affordable housing for agricultural laborers and their families, reports a policy paper funded by the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis.

Citing findings from the California Agricultural Workers Health Survey, conducted by the private nonprofit California Institute for Rural Studies, the policy paper recommends that health standards for farm-labor housing be better enforced and a permanent funding source, independent of farm employers, be created to meet the needs of California's growing agricultural labor force.

One of the most striking findings of the survey was that nearly half of hired crop farmworkers, predominantly males, did not live with any of their immediate family members while working on California farms. The survey also found that approximately two-thirds of the participants rented their dwellings, with only one out of 16, or five percent, renting from their employers.

"California's demand for hired farmworkers has substantially increased in recent years, however the supply of employer-provided housing for hired farmworkers has sharply declined," said Don Villarejo, director of the California Institute for Rural Studies. Villarejo co-authored the policy paper along with Marc Schenker, professor and chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at UC Davis.

"Because of this shortage and the high cost of housing in California, many farmworkers, who make significant contributions to our state's economy, can't even afford the most basic dwellings," Villarejo added. "This survey revealed that many of the dwellings in which they live are irregular structures that were never intended for human habitation and many of these lack plumbing, food-preparation facilities or both." Indeed, the survey found that 48 percent of farmworker dwellings in California are overcrowded, and many of those are not intended for human habitation.

The policy paper noted that earlier reports on poor health or potentially hazardous environmental exposures associated with farm-labor housing conditions seldom suggested a direct link between health status and substandard or overcrowded housing. However, health professionals know that the lack of a refrigerator in the home can result in more gastrointestinal illnesses and that poor living conditions can result in significantly elevated levels of anxiety and depression among the residents.

Furthermore, large numbers of unrelated immigrant workers sharing a dwelling may increase the risk of spreading infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, parasite infections and malaria, diseases that are endemic in the workers' home countries.

The policy paper authors recommend:

• Better enforcement of health standards for farm-labor housing to prevent the spread of infectious diseases;
• Establishing a permanent funding source to increase the supply of safe and affordable housing for farm laborers;
• Creating state-mandated shortcuts for the approval of housing intended to serve hired farmworkers in counties where there is an unmet demand for safe and affordable housing;
• Eliminating housing vouchers in guest-worker programs because there is no evidence that they meet the intended need and could be misused by unscrupulous landlords;
• Creating incentives for local authorities to meet farm-labor housing needs by granting indirect preferences for local infrastructure-improvement bonds funds;
• Initiating substantial new research on the supply and status of farm-labor housing, especially to determine the extent of health hazards;
• Enhancing California's public-health workforce, with special attention to hired farmworkers and to regions with a long-standing history of violations; and
• Avoiding the allocation of public funds for farmworker housing directly to farm employers, so that workers are not placed in the position of having an employer controlling their housing situation.

Funding for the policy paper was provided by the John Muir Institute of the Environment, a collaboration of UC Davis experts seeking solutions to complex environmental challenges. The farmworker housing paper is one of many projects that the institute supports to encourage collaboration between researchers, policymakers and the public.

UC Davis also is proposing to establish a School of Public Health, whose focus would include farmworker health and other rural health issues.

The complete text of the paper is available on the John Muir Institute of the Environment's Web site at http://johnmuir.ucdavis.edu/pdflibrary/whitepapers/FarmLaborHousing.pdf.

Information about the California Institute for Rural Studies is online at http://www.cirsinc.org.