Abstract:

California farmworker housing cooperatives represent a small, but important, sector of California’s affordable farmworker housing stock. Farmworker housing cooperatives first took root in the state as the result of farmworker-led grassroots initiatives to fight displacement and establish roots in the communities where they worked. The first four out of the eleven farmworker housing cooperatives that have been established in the state were driven by farmworkers seeking ownership and control of their housing in the 1970s and early 1980s (Bandy 1992). These farmworkers were motivated by years of living in substandard conditions as renters at the mercy of labor contractors, large growers and slumlords. They sought out the cooperative as an intermediate form of ownership that could deliver ownership, control, dignity and security in situations where single-family housing was infeasible. Many years later farmworker housing cooperatives still fill this important niche in the farmworker housing inventory by providing affordable ownership in settings where single family or condominium ownership is not feasible.