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…