Ochoa migrant labor camp needed longer to house immigrant
workers
Gilroy – A winter refuge for homeless families may itself be in need of a new home, according to officials at St. Joseph’s Family Center.
The highly successful program the nonprofit agency operates at the Ochoa migrant labor camp in southwest Gilroy is facing increasing pressure to find a new home from the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Clara, a quasi-governmental agency that owns the land, according to St. Joseph’s Executive Director David Cox.
Federal funds have failed to cover the cost of supporting the program and now the Housing Authority is facing mandates to allow migrant workers to use the camp for a greater portion of the year. The new deadlines leave even less time to paint and repair the roughly 65 homes at Ochoa – surrounded by farmland and the city’s sewer plant off Southside Drive – before homeless families arrive in December and depart at the end of February.
“It’s been a good partnership but it’s tough right now because of expenses and the way the (U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Migrant Services) is restructuring the migrant program,” Cox said. “I would just say that all parties concerned are looking at different avenues and areas where we can hopefully continue the (homeless) program in some way. We of course would love to see the program continue, but to some extent, we understand the Housing Authority’s hands are tied.”
The $300,000-plus needed to run the program is already in place for this winter, and officials have applied to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to renew the grant for the season starting December 2007. After that, it remains unclear if the Housing Authority will continue to allow the program to remain at the site.
“There are some time constraints and some money constraints,” said Richard Warren, the Housing Authority’s director of property management. “The HUD funding isn’t really adequate.”
In addition to more than $200,000 in federal money, St. Joseph’s Family Center provides roughly $45,000 and the Housing Authority provides more than $25,000. Some of the Housing Authority’s costs are offset by rent payments from families, who can be charged up to 30 percent of their income depending on their financial status.
The agency is required to use the site as a labor camp and abide by mandates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture since funds from the agency subsidized the purchase of the land. While the migrant worker program is a priority for the Housing Authority, Warren stressed that the agency has not made any final decisions about ending the program.
“We’re trying to achieve a positive outcome,” he said, “and it’s way too early in the process for us to say what will happen.”
The future may be unclear for the winter homeless program, but it’s past successes are well documented. Of the 69 families that stayed at the site last winter, 42 were “transitioned” into permanent housing. When the program started in December, only 15 adults had monthly incomes above $1,000. By the time the program ended in February, 44 people were earning more than $1,000.
The success of the program rests in its intensity. Families in most emergency housing programs in the county often have a year or more to regain financial stability. Residents in Ochoa have three months, during which they are bombarded with a panoply of critical services: child care, health check-ups, job training and placement.
“They don’t have to worry about housing every night,” said Sherri Stuart, a member of the St. Joseph’s board of directors who writes the grant applications for the program’s financing. “They can focus on whatever they need to do to stabilize themselves, whether getting a job that pays more, getting the kids healthy, getting a full time job instead of a part time job. That three months of calm where you can actually address the systemic problem is vital.”
St. Joseph’s took over the program in the late ’90s from EHC LifeBuilders, a nonprofit agency that providers emergency housing in Gilroy, San Jose and other parts of Santa Clara County. The agency is currently working on an emergency shelter that would include 10 family units earmarked for stays of up to three months, potentially offsetting some of the losses if Ochoa were to close. The agency indefinitely delayed construction of the project last moth, however, after learning that major development companies that had pledged to support the project were having trouble finding contractors to donate labor and materials.
The loss of Ochoa would compound the housing shortage already facing the area, according to Dina Campeau, chairwoman of the South County Collaborative, a consortium of human service agencies. She said even the cheapest housing in the low-income category is only affordable to families earning $60,000 to $80,000 a year.
“When you have people who are maids or cooks, they’re working, but it’s really difficulty for them to maintain housing,” Campeau said. “It’s really hard far them to stay afloat in an emergency. They live one paycheck to the next.”
