Royal community commemorates ag workers' homes

24 new homes to be built in Quincy as well

ROYAL CITY — Roughly 75 days from now, Gerardo and Jesus Ceja will have their own rooms.

That's what the 8-year-old and the 14-year-old appeared to be most excited about Friday afternoon, as the Royal Slope community turned out to commemorate the building of five houses for Columbia Basin farm workers.

Even though the foundations for the houses were already evident in the dirt outside the Jardin de Rosas office building, inside, speakers celebrated in a groundbreaking ceremony of sorts the opportunity for five farm workers and their families to become home owners.

Through a translator, Jose Galindo said he, his wife and their four children, presently living in a trailer park in Royal City, would have more space for their family when they move into their new housing.

Galindo said it is a good chance for them to buy a home, and especially a chance for a Latino person to have the opportunity to purchase a home, and thanked Washington Agricultural Families Assistance, or WAFA, the program making it possible.

WAFA Board Chairman Mike Lowry said the five buildings, ranging in size from 1,007 square-feet to 1,506 square-feet, would be ready for the families to move in roughly 75 days after the ceremony.

In order to qualify, a family must meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture definition of agriculture worker, which is an income of $3,050 per year from agriculture, Lowry said. The income cannot exceed 80 percent of the county median income.

"In Grant County, a family of four's median income is just about $50,000, so to be eligible for our program, a family of four's income cannot be over $39,900," Lowry said. The limit increases as the number of family members increases.

The non-profit corporation takes preliminary applications and sends them off to financial institutions doing the mortgage and credit work.

"Thirteen families are now in their homes, this will be 18, and then we have an application approved for 24 in Quincy that will start sometime in the next six months," Lowry said, clarifying that those are for 24 new homes, in addition to the 18 already completed or in the works.

Housing Authority of Grant County director John Poling noted that many of those attending the ceremony probably passed a trailer park where families lived as they drove into the area on Dotson Road. A Royal City schoolteacher called him over the winter, he noted, to inform him only one of the trailers on the site has running water.

"What can you do about that? If you shut it down, you've made a whole bunch of people homeless," Poling said. "What you really can do about it, of course, is develop housing."

Comparing the trailer park to the houses being built, Poling said good work is being done through the WAFA program.

"It's our smallest program, but it's one of our most important," he said.

Congressman Doc Hastings, (R)-4th District, said home ownership is especially important for the type of labor force to work the diverse crops in the area.

"That labor force has always been a migrant labor force, that is so important to our economy," he said. "It just seems to me that any thing we can do to allow those people, that are such an important part of our economy, to have proper housing certainly makes sense."

Other speakers included Royal City Mayor Justin Jenks, U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development director Jon DeVaney, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Director of Community Planning and Development Jack Peters and Washington State Farm Worker Housing Trust Interim Coordinator Tom Byers.