Over the last month and a half, as floodwaters receded and dry weather set in, we interviewed farm workers and ag laborers impacted by storms in January and March. Through interpreters, they detail…
in California, making federal funding available to those battered by storms across much of the state. For individuals, the declaration opened up federal support for housing assistance, food aid, counseling, medical support and legal services.
Further fueling Chavez’s urgency is a fear that their landlord will take back his trailer before they are ready to move.Florencio Torres worked through the parade of storms that pummeled the county – and the state – this winter but has struggled to keep up with bills and rent payments as weather slashed his regular hours.
Typically, Torres works year-round for South County Packing, a subsidiary of the local produce company Rava Ranches, Inc. Rava Ranches opted to not provide comment for this story. “What I saw is that we don’t have jobs where we can get money to be able to pay rent and for us to pay for food. Where we can get money, the work was destroyed. I tried to look for other places where there is work but people are filling them and they are getting only small amounts of work. They are not going to make enough for rent and food so that we can eat.”
Speaking in Mixteco, one of several Indigenous languages spoken in southern Mexico, Garcia said the floodwaters got to about knee height in her family’s room.Everything, including her place of work. Garcia picks strawberries for a living. That’s all she does, she said. Her husband and son also work in the fields.
Apart from community support, Garcia said she hasn’t been able to access help, in part due to the language barrier. The space S rents out is located in the backyard of her landlord’s property and is not part of a larger mobile home park, as she described. When storms returned in March, S said the mobile home and her family’s belongings inside were damaged by water that leaked in – including a new bed S purchased for around $1,000 before the rain started.
To provide housing and other types of needs assistance, FEMA is required by law to verify an applicant’s occupancy and/or ownership. Applicants must also prove that their disaster-damaged home was their primary residence. Tiana Suber, FEMA public information officer, confirmed that as long as someone has a lease agreement or something to prove that they are living at the residence in question, they can apply for assistance.
For Vasilia Mendoza Mendoza, getting through the pandemic was a challenge. But it was nothing like this winter. Mendoza has been a farmworker since she was 14 years old. Over the past two decades, she’s cycled through local fields in San Lucas, San Ardo, Gilroy, Hollister, Watsonville and Santa Cruz. She expected to continue this season. But by the time Mendoza sought work, lands she typically tended to were too wet to welcome crews, she said. Needing a job in the meantime, Mendoza shifted to packing produce.
Millan packs vegetables for Braga Fresh Foods in Gonzales. Millan has worked at the facility, 10-12 hours a day, for the past three years. Before that, she was in the fields.
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