Federal funding to expand affordable farmworker housing reaches Oregon

Oregon farmworkers, many of them immigrants, face a housing market that is fraught with substandard living conditions or is financially out of reach. Through a round of $18 million in investments from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one housing nonprofit in McMinnville will rehabilitate two dozen housing units to address some of those shortfalls.

The USDA’s Rural Development office will award McMinnville-based nonprofit Community Home Builders nearly $1 million to rehabilitate 24 apartments in Villa del Sol – a farmworker housing community near McMinnville. It’s part of an ongoing effort to tackle rural housing shortages, and more specifically to provide affordable housing for farmworkers.

“It’s important that we treat our farmworkers with dignity and make sure that their health and wellbeing is important. Why? Because they are the ones that work very hard at making sure that the food is processed, the food is picked, the food is brought to our table,” said Joaquin Altoro, the Rural Housing Services administrator for the USDA.

Teresa Smith, president of Community Home Builders, said there’s a shortage of affordable housing for all Oregonians, but it can be more dire for many agriculture workers.

The average farmworker family in Oregon earns between $20,000 and $25,000 per year, according to a 2023 report from Oregon Housing and Community Services. That can force many families into overcrowded or poor housing conditions. The report estimates there are 66,269 farmworker households in Oregon, most of whom need subsidized housing that currently does not exist.

Developments like Villa de Sol, which is being rehabilitated due to a mold problem, help, said Smith.

“Housing is so expensive, and wages have not gone up that much, so for them to afford a normal apartment or a house is almost impossible,” Smith said. “So this helps them do that.”

Advocates say more affordable or subsidized farmworker housing needs to be built, and pay also needs to go up. U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat who was touring Villa de Sol with Joaquin Altoro on Monday, said there also needs to be more safety nets for farmworkers.

Salinas, one of two Oregon delegates in the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, is currently pitching a bill to Congress to provide financial relief to farmworkers if they lose earnings due to extreme weather or public health events.

“They don’t get paid [if they lose hours due to natural disasters], they don’t have access to unemployment insurance, they don’t have anything to keep them here,” Salinas said. “And it not only hurts the individual who is working on the farm and harvesting and growing the produce, but also the operation, the farmer themselves because that makes the labor uncertain as well.”

The USDA investment comes as farmworker and affordable housing groups have, for years, asked state regulators to update farmworker housing conditions they say are “alarmingly outdated.”

In August, Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Division, or Oregon OSHA, released a set of proposed changes to tighten health and safety standards for farmworker housing. The agency has not yet issued a final decision.