Half Moon Bay capturing highlights brutal housing situations

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HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — 

The bloodstains that mark the violent deaths of Aixiang Zhang and her husband, Zhishen Liu, are nonetheless seen on the bottom of the mushroom farm the place they had been shot final month — fading patches that can be gone with the following rain.

It’s a sorrowful sight, that their lives might disappear so shortly and utterly into the grime and gravel of this lonely place.

However it is usually laborious, differently, to take a look at the insufficient housing only a few ft away the place a few of the employees right here had been residing: thin-walled rooms on a concrete-block basis that should be frigid within the thick fog that usually wraps this coast; a bleak, shared kitchen with a desk topped in stainless-steel; a shared lavatory reached by crossing the chilly concrete flooring of a shed. There may be nothing of consolation or heat in it, nothing that appears like dwelling right here at Harmony Farms.

Nonetheless, these lodging appear luxurious in contrast with these on the mushroom grower a number of miles away, California Terra Backyard, the place a disgruntled employee started the capturing rampage that killed seven — three at Harmony and 4 at Terra — on Jan. 23, presumably motivated by a $100 debt the employer had levied towards him.

There, a colony of RVs, shacks and even a transport container served as houses, tarps protecting some to maintain out the latest torrent of rain. The loos are 4 port-a-potties, blue siding a splotch of colour in a panorama of beaten-down squalor on the base of a flourishing grove of eucalyptus bushes.

For many years, the housing we think about truthful and livable for agricultural employees — even when we don’t admit it — has hinged on what Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez describes because the “plantation mentality” of California’s farming business.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez stands close to an space on a farm the place a employee was killed by a mass shooter in Half Moon Bay.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

“Employees are solely right here to work, and that’s it,” is how he described it, as we drove via this city the place poverty and prosperity are neighbors however hardly ever mingle.

The Ritz-Carlton lords over a primary part of the beachfront bluffs right here, barrel waves crashing towards the sheer cliffs beneath, friends sipping $24 glasses of Paso Robles Cabernet. The world-famous Mavericks surf spot is minutes away.

Each are attracts for the tech millionaires from Palo Alto, simply over the Santa Cruz Mountains, who've turned this once-sleepy pit cease of farms into a spot of trophy mansions and Teslas, snapping up land and driving up rents — however hardly ever venturing up the unpaved trails that result in locations like Terra Backyard.

After the capturing, Gov. Gavin Newsom weighed in, calling housing at Terra Backyard “deplorable.” However he didn’t name it shocking.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez stands close to an space on a farm the place a employee was killed by a mass shooter in Half Moon Bay.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

As a result of dilapidated, overcrowded housing for farmworkers has lengthy been the norm, not the exception.

“These situations are properly established and recognized,” Newsom stated, including the problem is “difficult.”

Certain, a few of it's difficult. However a few of it's not.

The easy reality is our total system of agricultural manufacturing is predicated on giving employees as little as doable, underneath circumstances that make it laborious if not harmful to complain — whether or not which means being undocumented or simply so poor the lack of even a day’s work is devastating. Even the great actors, the growers who pay higher wages and have modernized housing, usually supply situations most non-immigrant employees would refuse.

Weak employees preserve quiet as a result of they know life can all the time worsen. Jimenez remembers being 4 years previous, hiding within the Brussels sprouts whereas federal immigration authorities hovered in helicopters overhead.

The place it will get thorny, to Newsom’s level, is why nothing adjustments: These with the ability to crack down on depressing housing usually don’t as a result of they know there isn't any place for farmworkers to go.

“I perceive there are legal guidelines,” stated Jimenez, as we bumped via city in his electrical blue ’92 Chevy pickup, bay leaves from a latest vigil drying on the dashboard. The son of farmworkers, he lived in a home with 21 individuals as a child, earned a grasp’s diploma and got here again to combat.

But when the town of Half Moon Bay, the county of San Mateo and even the state of California shut down subpar housing, red-tag it or implement these legal guidelines that make it unlawful to stuff people in transport containers and shacks with no working water or insulation, what occurs to the employees, and their youngsters?

Vanessa Rodriguez of the nonprofit Ayudando Latinos A Soñar distributes checks to farmworkers at a farm the place a mass capturing occurred in Half Moon Bay.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

Jimenez and different advocates had visited Terra Backyard many occasions earlier than. Two advocates had delivered plastic sheeting to cowl the roofs simply hours earlier than the capturing.

Eight households, 27 individuals, had been allegedly residing there. Employees had been making about $3,000 a month and paying $300 of that in hire.

The place would they've gone if their housing, pitiful because it was, was taken away in a city the place market-rate studio residences hire for greater than $2,000 a month? The place the median dwelling worth is $1.2 million? The place the $300 hovels appeared like an affordable supply, or at the least an inexpensive one?

“We'd be liable for individuals being homeless, or shifting right into a worse state of affairs,” Jimenez stated of that conundrum. “But it surely makes you suppose, is my resolution higher than the issue?”

Rocio Avila sleeps in a room smaller than the typical jail cell.

She shares it along with her husband, Roberto Hernandez, and their three youngsters, paying $500 a month.

Rocio Avila watches her youngsters Angel, 5, and Perla, 8, within the bed room of their dwelling in Half Moon Bay. The household of 5 sleeps on this bed room.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

Perla, 8, and Angel, 5, wedge in with their dad and mom on a queen-size mattress. It’s pushed into the nook, but it surely nonetheless takes up practically the whole house, leaving solely a slim walkway broad sufficient to open the door.

Crystal Avila, 11, is Avila’s eldest daughter. She’s an artist with lengthy pigtails and rosy cheeks who sleeps on the ground on the foot of the mattress, slightly nest between the body and the closet, beneath an image she drew of pink cherry blossoms.

“Now we have the privilege to have one thing different individuals don’t,” Avila informed me once I visited her dwelling this week. She is without doubt one of the fortunate ones, she stated. She has a house with working water and energy, loos inside and a range that works.

Nonetheless, Avila is determined for a much bigger home, one the place the youngsters may be free as a substitute of making an attempt to remain out of the way in which.

Crystal goals of an enormous bed room, with house for a desk — “residing an excellent life,” as she places it.

Which means figuring out “the place you’re going to check. The place are you siblings going be, the place your dad and mom going to be? And, like, to be calm and know that you just’re in a secure place,” she tells me.

Each fourth Friday, Crystal and her mother march in a vigil downtown for inexpensive housing. Avila isn’t certain the city actually cares.

“We're a part of the group too,” she stated. “They know this, and so they don’t need Half Moon Bay to develop.”

Each farmworker is in the identical plight, in a method or one other.

“Gloria” labored at one of many mushroom farms, however she doesn’t need me to make use of her identify. She rents a room for $1,200 a month in a two-bedroom home shared by 10 individuals, the place she just isn't allowed to make use of the kitchen.

She buys all her meals from the restaurant the place she works nights.

She is making an attempt to economize, $10,000, to convey her daughter from Mexico. They haven’t seen one another in a 12 months, slightly loss of life on daily basis.

Angel Avila, 5, and is sister Perla, 8, play in a room they share with one other sibling and their dad and mom at dwelling in Half Moon Bay.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

However Gloria can by no means appear to get forward, by no means save sufficient on her $15.50 minimal wage, in a spot the place it could take about $38 an hour to stay a median life.

She’s again working on the farm throughout the day, although the shock remains to be clear in her eyes. She wants the cash.

Maurilio Lopez Chavez understands that frustration.

His youngsters are with him — Leonardo, 1, and Sochi, 6.

Sochi goals of being a chef, or perhaps a health care provider. However Lopez Chavez works at a flower farm, and the rain destroyed the roots of the dahlia crop. Now there aren't any flowers to reap, no work, no cash coming in.

He lives in an condo that's owned by his employer. He pays $1,500 a month, what the proprietor says is a reduced price good solely so long as he stays employed on the nursery. However Lopez Chavez owes that quantity, destroyed crop or not.

He can’t get unemployment advantages as a result of he's undocumented. He’s come to Ayudando Latinos A Soñar, generally known as ALAS, an area nonprofit, for meals and assist. In a latest survey by UC Merced, greater than 60% of farmworkers stated they’ve had hassle paying for meals for the reason that pandemic hit.

“I don’t take care of myself,” Lopez Chavez stated as he waited for donated Safeway reward playing cards.

However the youngsters, they’re hungry.

::

The predicament of farmworkers throughout California has grown worse lately.

The pandemic introduced loss of life, the crowded residing situations letting COVID-19 sweep via houses and workplaces. But within the Merced examine, practically 1 / 4 of employees didn’t know that they had a proper to paid sick go away.

Local weather change has introduced extra extremes, fireplace and floods that go away employees choosing strawberries in downpours and grapes in thick smoke. Greater than a 3rd of respondents within the Merced examine stated they've hassle preserving their home heat sufficient or cool sufficient as climate turns into extra extreme.

Fifteen % stated they really feel uncontrollable fear; 14% really feel depressed or hopeless.

All of which makes me marvel: Would the system actually collapse if we demand higher for employees, or if we supported them after they demand higher for themselves? If we scrutinized labor situations of America‘s farmworkers with the identical urgency we use to make sure our mushrooms are natural, our espresso fair-trade and our chickens roaming free?

Farmworker Yesnia Garcia stands in her front room of her modular dwelling on a farm in Half Moon Bay.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

A number of miles from Terra Backyard, Yesenia Garcia lives in a cute, wood-sided modular dwelling on Cabrillo Farms.

Flowers and greens are planted round its borders, and inside, laminate wooden floors move right into a kitchen the place glass tiles beautify the backsplash.

There are 4 bedrooms, two baths, and a washer and dryer that make her busy life as a working mom simpler. An enormous tv hangs on the wall of the lounge, the place her two sons’ toy vehicles are lined up subsequent to the sofa.

Garcia is on the newly fashioned San Mateo County Farmworker Advisory Fee, and that is the form of housing she is combating for.

Jimenez, the vice mayor, stated the homeowners of Terra Backyard are contemplating constructing one thing comparable.

But it surely shouldn’t take seven deaths to make us demand they do.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez checks on farmworkers in Half Moon Bay.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

And that’s the ache — the trauma and struggling of a long time, not moments — the farmworkers of Half Moon Bay need you to recollect when the following mass capturing tries to tear our consideration away from this group.

Honor the lifeless.

However don’t overlook: One thing wants to alter for the residing.

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