As California continues to wrestle with a full-blown housing crisis—marked by record homelessness, skyrocketing rents, and an acute shortage of affordable units—it is missing one of the most dangerous and underreported pieces of the puzzle: the invisible, substandard housing conditions endured by the very workers who make the state’s agricultural economy possible.
In a commentary published by JURIST on March 31, 2025, UC Law San Francisco student Joshua Villanueva lifts the veil on the squalid, overcrowded, and dangerously neglected living environments provided to many of California’s farmworkers.
These workers, often recruited through the federal H-2A visa program, are legally entitled to employer-provided housing that meets basic standards of health and safety. But as Villanueva documents, what many receive in practice are dwellings overrun with vermin, riddled with exposed wiring, and lacking fundamental amenities like mattresses or sufficient bathrooms.
This is a public health emergency waiting to explode.
California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is charged with inspecting and enforcing the state’s employee housing laws. Yet, according to Villanueva, the agency has only a handful of full-time inspectors to oversee thousands of farmworker facilities scattered across California’s vast agricultural regions. In 2022, the agency found more than 1,000 housing violations—but issued just one citation. Some inspections have reportedly been conducted virtually via FaceTime.
This shocking under-enforcement is more than bureaucratic negligence—it directly endangers both workers and consumers. In a since-removed 2020 budget request, the HCD itself acknowledged that poor housing conditions for farmworkers can become vectors for infectious disease, including E. coli and Salmonella—both of which are capable of contaminating produce and entering the broader food supply chain. When farmworkers live packed into substandard quarters, often without running water or proper sanitation, pathogens don’t stay contained. They travel—onto hands, into packing facilities, through trucks and onto grocery store shelves.
In other words, what begins as a labor and housing issue quietly metastasizes into a statewide, even national, food safety concern.
California’s failure to address the farmworker housing crisis is emblematic of the broader structural failures plaguing the state’s housing policy. We talk endlessly about housing shortages in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. We analyze zoning reform, CEQA litigation, and the rise of “YIMBY” (Yes In My Backyard) activism. But these debates almost never include the rural housing that serves the state’s most exploited workers.
Farmworkers, many of whom are undocumented or temporarily employed through the H-2A visa system, have little power to advocate for themselves. They often fear retaliation or deportation for speaking out. They are essential to the $50 billion California agricultural industry, but politically disposable. Their housing crisis doesn’t generate media buzz, real estate speculation, or upzoning bills in Sacramento.
As Villanueva writes, these workers are the “last line of defense” before our food enters the supply chain. When we ignore their living conditions, we don’t just harm them—we harm everyone.
One of the most important contributions of Villanueva’s piece is his legal analysis of state liability. Public agencies like the HCD and California Department of Public Health (CDPH) are typically shielded from lawsuits under “discretionary immunity,” a doctrine that protects government entities when they make policy decisions, such as how many inspectors to hire.
But that immunity doesn’t apply when agencies fail to perform mandatory duties written into law. For instance, California’s Housing Code requires that substandard buildings “shall be declared a public nuisance” and “shall be abated.”
When agencies ignore these requirements, they may be exposing themselves to liability, especially if their inaction contributes to a public health outbreak tied to contaminated produce.
Similarly, CDPH regulations require food to be protected from “dirt, vermin, unnecessary handling… or other environmental sources of contamination.” When farmworker housing fails this standard—and the agencies responsible fail to act—there may be legal grounds to challenge their negligence. As Villanueva notes, no consumer has yet attempted to hold the state liable for foodborne illness arising from housing failures. But that door may soon open, especially in light of repeated outbreaks and the state’s chronic inspection failures.
What happens in an overcrowded bunkhouse in Fresno County doesn’t stay there. The bag of salad mix in your fridge may have passed through half a dozen hands living in unsafe, unsanitary conditions. That beautiful produce you picked up at the farmer’s market last weekend? It may have been harvested by a worker sleeping on a floor without heat or clean water.
There’s a straight line from housing injustice in California’s agricultural belt to food safety risk in American households. And until we reckon with that truth, we will remain vulnerable—not just to outbreaks, but to the erosion of any moral claim we make about our food system being just, sustainable, or safe.
The solutions unfortunately, while not mysterious, have been deprioritized.
1. Enforcement staffing must be increased immediately. A handful of inspectors cannot possibly oversee thousands of housing facilities. Budget allocations to the HCD and CDPH should reflect the scale of the agricultural economy they regulate.
2. Transparency and data reporting should be mandatory. Inspection results, violations, and enforcement actions must be posted publicly and updated regularly.
3. Worker protection laws must be expanded to ensure that farmworkers—regardless of immigration status—can report unsafe housing without fear of retaliation.
4. Legal accountability must be explored. If state agencies fail to act on known violations that lead to public health risks, they should not be shielded from consequences. Immunity should not become impunity.
5. Inclusion in housing reform agendas. California’s housing debates must include rural and farmworker housing—not as an afterthought but as a central pillar. Safe housing isn’t a luxury for farmworkers—it’s a public safety necessity for us all.
California’s agricultural dominance has long relied on labor invisibility—on the assumption that those who harvest our food can be hidden from view and ignored without consequence. But the neglect of farmworker housing isn’t just a matter of moral failure. It’s a practical risk with real-world consequences.
Joshua Villanueva has exposed how legal inaction and bureaucratic inertia have left thousands of workers living in squalor.
Until we treat farmworker housing as a matter of statewide urgency, we are not only betraying the workers who feed us—we are endangering ourselves.
From article: “This is a public health emergency waiting to explode.”
Well, since it’s been that way for decades, seems likely that it will never “explode”.
Farmworkers are increasingly-replaced by machinery. Partly as a result of UCD’s efforts to create “square tomatoes”, so to speak. Not sure to what degree they’re involved with genetic engineering of plants.
Then there’s the other half of that – improvements in farm machine technology.
Let’s address a housing article without talking about housing
Goes to demand – something that you constantly think is “fixed”.
Never said that demand is fixed
Then I guess I don’t understand the reason for your comment.
“This is a public health emergency waiting to explode.”
If this were ready to explode, why didn’t it explode already? Is there some threshold of explosion when suddenly all the farmworkers are using lettuce as toilet paper when things get bad, and then package it for consumption?
“We talk endlessly about housing shortages . . . ”
Well, some of us do.
“For instance, California’s Housing Code requires that substandard buildings “shall be declared a public nuisance” and “shall be abated.” ”
As I’ve been saying for many years about allowing the so-called ‘homeless’ to live in substandard shanties they build that go un-inspected and would never pass – the law is good for me but not for thee.
“That beautiful produce you picked up at the farmer’s market last weekend? It may have been harvested by a worker sleeping on a floor without heat or clean water.”
That’s insulting if not libelous. I know and have been to several of the farms that sell produce at the farmer’s market. Many are in the Capay Valley. From what I’ve seen they treat their workers well and they live in decent housing conditions.
First build housing to save the school district, not build housing to keep the poop off your lettuce. How about don’t build housing because we value northern California not looking like Orange County? How about not building housing because we don’t want to dam any more rivers or destroy any more valleys?
Since this question has come up: If this were ready to explode, why didn’t it explode already?
Always a question of necessary but not sufficient conditions
What’s changed is really the question…
I would proffer: housing crisis with a long sustained period of cost increases, cutting or threatened cutting of federal funding like HUD and Section 8 vouchers, and immigration crackdowns.
The “immigration crackdowns” are going to push farmers toward further automation. Which isn’t a bad thing, except for the square tomatoes.
That’s also why people have gardens – so they can grow “actual” tomatoes. Except that gardens (yards, water usage for homeowners) have also now been effectively “outlawed”.