Affordable Housing for Workers

Finally, the wine industry is providing affordable housing to the backbone of the industry, the migrant farm workers. The handling and picking of grapes is critical in making a great wine. The farm workers hard work and importances is often over looked. Many come up from Mexico, and travel to different regions at different times for harvest. When the county farmworker centers are full, many have to be creative. A UC Davis study found about 500 farmworkers live outside or in cars during the grape harvest.
Nathan Crabbe's article, Work begins on farmworker housing center in today's Napanews.com reports on the ground breaking of Joseph Phelps' new affordable housing project. The 60-bed center is expected to cost nearly $3.6 million and is scheduled to be built in time for the 2003 grape harvest. The center will be built on eight acres donated by vintner Phelps on Silverado Trail near St. Helena. Two dormitories, a multipurpose building and staff apartments will be on the premise.
Crabbe explains some of the financial arrangements with Napa County:

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to increase by $400,000 the amount of a county loan to help finance construction.
Up to $1.2 million will now be loaned from the county housing trust fund for the project. The no-interest loan must be repaid within 60 years

Other housing options are coming up. The article explains,

A new site for a 40-bed yurt village at Lake Hennessey has been approved by the city of Napa and will be prepared in the coming months. The yurts are domed structures similar to the portable tents...

I'm impressed that Phelps donated land in such prime real estate area and dropped close to $3.6 million. That's about $60,000 per bedroom. It would be nice if the wine industry could adopt the City of Oakland's Living Wage Initiative and Santa Cruz's Living Wage Rule, which is based on the area's cost of living.