In a case that highlights the critical need for local housing and the lengths some people will undertake to profit from it, county officials say they are fining property owners Nicolas and Ana Ruvalcaba nearly $60,000 for renting out at least 62 illegal dwellings to farmworkers and their families on San Miguel Canyon Road in northern Monterey County.
The county had at first estimated that about 100 people were living at the site, including women and children. Now that estimate is more than 200.
Media reports indicate that the tenants were paying between $1,000 and $2,000 in rent each month. One tenant who was interviewed said she had no options beyond living at the site, but said she was treated with respect. Another woman who was interviewed echoed her comments.
These are the opening paragraphs in Chris Counts, “County busts landlord with illegal housing,” Carmel Pine Conc, May 19-25, 2023.
The news story goes on to detail the ways in which the housing was substandard:
The Monterey County Environmental Health Bureau reported that examples of site include units with “no heat, no smoke/carbon monoxide sensors, no windows, the presence of “poor water quality, sewage discharge onto the ground and mold.”
Point made: it’s low quality. But here’s the thing: every one of those tenants chose to live there. For them it appears to have been their best option. You don’t make people better off by preventing them from having the best of their lousy options. The person trying to take away that best option is not their friend.
The news story points out that the government is requiring the owners to “demolish unpermitted units and utilities.”
The fact that the government has royally screwed not just the landlords but also the tenants comes out in another paragraph:
The executive director of the Coalition of Homeless Services Providers, Genevieve Lucas-Conwell told the newspaper that her group has interviewed about 30 of the former tenants, which [sic] she said mostly speak Spanish and Mixtec. Lucas-Conwell said her group is helping connect them with other groups that can provide services, such as temporary housing. But she conceded there is a bottleneck of people in need of housing. “It’s a tough situation,” she said.
But it’s not tough for the government officials who are requiring that housing be destroyed.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
May 22 2023 at 8:40am
Even if one conceeds that there is some role for government to step in here (mold, poor water quality, and sewer discharge onto the ground are all legitimate public health concerns. I mean, that is a cholera outbreak waiting to happen), demolishing the housing and making these 200 residents homeless doesn’t make much sense. It’d be far better to just require the landlords to fix those issues.
steve
May 22 2023 at 12:09pm
Reading the article it looks like they built units in 2 giant agricultural sheds, or equivalents. I wouldn’t expect city sewage so you would need a pretty hefty septic system to handle 200 people. If the place was rated for 100 but they added another 100 you could overcome capacity. Would certainly explain no windows but heat should have been easy but might have been expensive.
Just so you know, cholera had its last outbreak in the US in the early 1900s. AFAIK every recent case has been acquired outside the US. Listeria, E coli, Rotavirus and a couple of others are the mani concerns and all can be deadly though usually just make you really sick. Mold is a real irritant but it’s almost never deadly and rarely makes you very sick unless you are allergic or have autoimmune issues.
Isn’t there a time issue here? What should we think about services or products that have short term benefits but high longer term costs? One bad E coli infection leading to long ICU stay and renal failure could cost millions, none of which I would expect the property owners to pay. The city and/or state are likely going to pay those costs or at least a large part of them.
Steve
Jon Murphy
May 22 2023 at 4:35pm
Oh yes, agreed. Cholera was just the first waste-born illness that came to mind, but any sort of contaminent would be horrible.
So, I’m not entirely sure where you are going with the entire paragraph (I highlighted just the first too lines for the sake of space). Yes, there are always time issues and calculating costs/benefits through time are what people tend to do. But what are the “short term benefits” and “long term costs” you’re referring to?
steve
May 22 2023 at 8:11pm
Short term they had a place to live. Long term they risk serious illness or death. That’s for the tenants. For the county/state there is the short term benefit of housing. The long term costs of health care might be much higher than the costs paid to house people. This is pretty common I think, concentrating on short term benefits and ignoring long term costs. I would expect it was amplified in this case where the property owners would be immune to future costs.
Steve
MarkW
May 23 2023 at 3:27pm
We have a perfectly legal form of housing in the U.S. that can accommodate large groups of unrelated people that provide no heat or air-conditioning and often no septic systems other than an outhouse. Sometimes fresh water is provided only by a single hand pumped well. In a few cases, there’s no fresh water source at all, and people have to bring in their own. Many of these housing ‘developments’ are so popular that they impose two-week stay limits to prevent people from choosing this housing for longer periods and to make space for others eager to become (temporary) residents.
These are called ‘campgrounds’, and many high income people travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to live in them for periods of time.
MarkW
May 25 2023 at 7:39am
Since this didn’t seem to go anywhere, the point of the campground example is that it is perfectly possible to have VERY primitive living conditions that are actually pleasant and not at all breeding grounds for disease.
Furthermore, and more importantly, the illegality of this operation was surely a major contributing factor in the unsanitary conditions — these folks had to be hidden away from view and obviously no inspectors or standards could be enforced because this was ‘black market’ living. This is similar to the safety risks (impurities, unknown potency, etc) associated with illicit drugs.
David Henderson
May 25 2023 at 3:56pm
Well said.
Dylan
May 22 2023 at 9:12am
What jumped out at me is the fact that they were still able to get $1000-$2000 a month for places like that. The quoted part of the article made it seem as if this was per tenant too, not per unit, but that might have just been sloppy writing.
Peter
May 22 2023 at 1:04pm
It’s all about your local market. I live here in Honolulu, a single walled studio with no HVAC, no parking, no laundry, jalousies, and rampant mold and roach infestations will easily go $1300 and rent out in a week.
And professionally I deal with trying to house homeless families. Because they get guaranteed rent vouches for extended periods (section 8 but also other programs, some private) that are based on family size, the landlords that take vouchers really gouge, ahem “efficiently price”, the housing to match the voucher floor so you get places like one bedrooms renting for 200% above market rate for comparable size and location that would never rent out sans these programs as they have things like exposed wiring, holes in walls and ceiling, etc but they can and do because they are the only folk that will accept vouchers.
$2000 might sound like a lot for a farm shack and you would be right but the part you are missing is the exploitive market there, i.e. as illegals they generally don’t have access to normal housing market as most landlords don’t want to accept the risk (can’t sue for damages or lease break, won’t pass background or credit checks, etc).
John hare
May 22 2023 at 1:46pm
What jumped at was that we could build simple units that could rent for $500.00 and make a profit if we could get permitting.
robc
May 23 2023 at 10:11am
Tiny houses would provide the benefit, without the health issues, and be profitable.
And yet, arent allowed.
robc
May 23 2023 at 10:16am
The Mad Housers build huts for homeless for $700-1200 each. Of course, they would never be approved even under a less restrictive system, but the point is, yeah, if you can collect $500 or $1000 monthly in rent, you can put something together profitably, if allowed.
robc
May 23 2023 at 10:20am
Their website hasn’t updated in about 10 years, so that price is surely out of date.
Andrew_FL
May 22 2023 at 12:51pm
Socialism of aesthetics. A comfortably middle class lifestyle is mandatory, and for those for whom it isn’t possible, well, make them wards of the state.
spencer
May 22 2023 at 2:39pm
It’s insane. Bernanke bankrupt half the homebuilders. And the construction of new residential houses hasn’t kept up with the growth in our population. And incomes also are not keeping up with house prices.
It all leads to higher crime rates.
Speed
May 23 2023 at 10:21am
This is the kind of story that has been written over and over again in areas that require seasonal agriculture workers … formerly known as, “pickers.” And it is the kind of story that will continue to be written until farming in the county is completely replaced by automation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_County,_California
https://www.fao.org/3/CB9479en/online/sofa-2022/labour-impacts-agricultural-automation.html
The above is by no means an attempt to justify the conditions described in the post.
Dylan
May 23 2023 at 5:06pm
I read Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley recently, and at first I thought you were pulling this quote directly from there.
Speed
May 24 2023 at 9:52am
Two phrases that have stayed with me since childhood:
“The more things change the more they stay the same.”
“The poor will always be with us” — about which Bing Chat says, “The phrase “the poor will always be with us” is attributed to Jesus and appears in different versions in the Bible. The phrase is often interpreted as a reminder that poverty will always exist and that helping the poor is a moral obligation. In one instance, Jesus used the phrase to counter his disciples’ criticism of a woman who poured expensive perfume on him instead of selling it and giving the money to the poor. The phrase has been the subject of theological and social interpretations.
Thomas Hutcheson
May 24 2023 at 4:21pm
Example # 13482 of regulations not crafted according to cost-benefit principles!