Most housing authorities require a one year lease for Section 8 clients. Housing authorities in home base states like Florida could reduce the required length of the lease for farmworker clients and work with housing authorities in upstream states to coordinate service to migrant farmworkers with Section 8 vouchers. One of the reforms sought by growers is to remove or limit their obligation to provide housing for these workers, or to at least allow growers to provide guestworkers with vouchers or cash to rent housing in the private market. However, HAC s survey indicates that private market housing occupied by farmworkers is more expensive and in much poorer condition overall than employer- owned housing. Removing the employer obligation to provide housing to H2A workers will therefore likely impose substantial hardship on these farm laborers.
Many rural areas have limited housing codes, and few resources to enforce the codes they have.
Stronger code enforcement for private market housing, and more substantial penalties for landlords who will not comply with housing codes, could promote greater maintenance of these properties. The prevalence of peeling paint raises the issue of lead poisoning, particularly in cases where children are present and units lack adequate sanitary facilities. HUD provides funding for lead abatement efforts, but could target some of this funding to organizations working in areas with large farmworker populations. This could be done either through a setaside or by providing some form of application priority, such as additional points when scoring requests, to mitigate this potential hazard in farmworker housing. The housing problems documented in HAC s survey have implications for the work of other farmworker service networks, particularly healthcare providers.