Via Don Carlos
Written by Dawn DiPrince | 
Posada's housing for migrant farm workers
Regardless of your religious affiliation (or lack of one), you likely know the story of La Posada. This Spanish word for "inn" refers to the story of Mary, very pregnant, and her husband Joseph looking for a place to stay in Bethlehem. They knock on many doors and are repeatedly told, "There is no room for you here."Posada of Pueblo, for over 20 years, has hustled, advocated and provided housing for the people in our community who also have no place to stay-from the homeless to those living in unsafe and unhealthy situations.
Armed with this mission, Posada has championed Via Don Carlos, a proposed development of 30 housing units for farm workers that would provide housing for up to 150 people. While these same farm workers have been the topic of much political posturing, the fact that migrant farm labor supports a $900-million agricultural industry in southeastern Colorado is undisputed. In Pueblo County alone, last year, 881 farms and ranches utilized 910,566 acres of land and collectively earned over $49 million.
You likely could not have eaten a salad, purchased roasted chilies at the Chile Fest or enjoyed food from a farmer's market without the hard-working hands of migrant farm labor. While agriculture can happen without the assistance of migrant farm labor, according to Anne Stattelman, Director of Posada, "Eliminating the presence of farm workers or switching to less labor intensive crops has been shown to have a negative impact on regions and to reduce the number of jobs available to permanent local residents."
Think of the difference between seed corn and peaches-and-cream corn, or between hay and farm-fresh tomatoes. Without migrant farm labor, crops that can only be cultivated with hand-harvesting-chilies, sweet corn, tomatoes, cantaloupe, eggplant, etc.-would be replaced by those that can be managed by machine-hay, sorghum and sugar beets.
At the peak of our annual growing season, 1600 people need housing in Pueblo County. "Year after year the farm workers in Pueblo County live in places unfit for human habitation," explains Stattelman.
Sister Nancy Crafton works directly with undocumented immigrants and farm worker populations. She describes, "From the very beginning, 15 years ago, we have found workers living in sheds, barns, trash trailers, outdoors by the Arkansas River, in cars, open garages, hay lofts, and in every unimaginable place. In response to the anti-immigration wave following September 11, 2001, our families have faced more isolation and much tighter scrutiny. The single men continue to live in abominable conditions usually associated with penned-up animals."
Stattelman adds, "Bathrooms for the farm workers can be outhouses, but are generally buckets or holes dug into the ground. Electricity often is a single light bulb with power pirated from a utility pole. Heating for the living and sleeping areas is almost always non-existent."
For the past decade, advocates have worked to make their visions of safe and affordable farm worker housing tangible-to find a real solution to this unhealthy situation. Via Don Carlos is named for the late Bishop Charles Buswell, to honor his lifetime commitment to peace and equality. The $6 million project, with 30 housing units plus a community center on 31 acres of land, will be situated near the Huerfano River and along 57th Lane in Avondale. The land was purchased in 2001 with $45,000 from the Pueblo County Commissioners.
In addition to support from the County Commissioners, the Via Don Carlos project, interestingly, has a wide variety of funding partners working to make it possible: USDA Rural Development, Federal Home Loan Bank, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, Catholic Charities, StEPP Foundation, Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, and Rural Housing Development.
Despite an established need and a vast array of funding partners, Via Don Carlos has still not broken ground. As with any big project, there have been a variety of obstacles. This project has been challenged by everything from water to changing priorities within the USDA.
One of the most recent challenges was rent subsidies. The project initially received rent subsidies as part of the funding from the USDA. As Posada worked out issues with bringing water to an undeveloped piece of land, some funding expired. According to Kim Bowman, Development Director for Posada, they received $2 million in grant funds with $1 million in loans-but no subsidies. Bowman notes, "The project could not be built without benefit of rental subsidies."
In one of those seeming miracles that only happen when people are working hard, Posada received word this August about this missing piece. Bowman explains, "We received notification of an allocation of thirty units of rental subsidies to support the VDC project."
With this hurdle overcome, "We have reassembled our development team, reexamined budgets, architectural plans, cost estimates for water engineering and the financial feasibility of the project to move forward," says Bowman.
After many ups and downs, Bowman and Stattelman are nervous to declare a specific date for the start of the project. Yet, they both have their eyes on 2010 and Bowman will say, "July would be a splendid time for celebrating a ground breaking."
To qualify for space in a Via Don Carlos housing unit, an individual must earn 70 percent of his or her income from agricultural-based activities. Families will pay rent at 30 percent of their gross income.
While there is much established support, some citizens in Pueblo County and beyond express frustration that projects like Via Don Carlos use taxpayer dollars for people who are not citizens. Stattelman also says, "Second and third-generation immigrants were angry that 'new' immigrants would be living in a better place than they were living in."
Beyond that, she states, "There was a definite racist tone with some groups who were opposed to the project."
On the flip side, immigration advocates explain that undocumented workers do pay taxes. "Farm workers pay into the system with taxes and will never reap the benefits for all their work," says Stattelman.
The Bell Policy Center of Colorado estimates that there are 225,000 to 275,000 undocumented workers in the state of Colorado. These same people, according to Bell Policy Center research, cost the state and local governments nearly $225 million each year. On the flip side, they also estimate that undocumented immigrants pay up to $195 million each year in state and local sales and property taxes and in state income tax.
Via Don Carlos has received support from people outside of immigrant rights groups. Stattelman says local farmers want a stable place for their workers to live. Health care workers have expressed support too, as they "see first hand the issues that come from having a sanitary place to live," says Stattelman.
Whether you view Via Don Carlos as moral obligation, good economic sense or something more ominous, Posada and its partners appear to have the momentum necessary to complete this vision.
Bowman says, "This project has been a dream of so many for so long. Sometimes I think about all the challenges. I regret the time it has taken to move this project forward and all the families here in our own community who suffer living in unbelievably substandard housing. I think about these things and hope that Via Don Carlos will be a testament to all those who have suffered living in trashed-out buses and sheds and to those who have never once wavered in their beliefs that supporting the needs of the poor is the most important work we do."
Photo Caption: Perfecto Camacho displaying onions he picks at a farm in southeastern Colorado. Courtesy photo, Chris Markuson.
