Housing for workers is a challenge for many Vermont business owners, but for dairy farmers like Chelsea Sprague of Brookfield, the need for proximity makes options even more limited.
“It’s important to us to have our farm workers living on site,” Sprague said. “Because of that… we provide housing for them within walking distance or a short bike ride away.”
With 700 cows, 100 calves and 1,600 acres in grass and corn, the Sprague family relies on eight employees to keep their fifth-generation dairy farm running. Four live down the street in a renovated 6-bedroom house. But a “huge rambling old farmhouse” across the street where the other four workers live still needs significant work, she said.
The Spragues are one of 16 farms that were recently awarded a $30,000 interest-free mortgage to upgrade housing for employees from a new program through Champlain Housing Trust and the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.
The loan, which will pay for roughly half the cost of the needed upgrades and will be forgiven after 10 years if the housing remains in good condition, will help “a lot,” according to Sprague.
“It makes it so that you can do the entire project instead of just picking and choosing,” she said.
The VHCB set aside $1 million for the program after internal and independent research showed the extent of the housing challenge for farmers and farmworkers.
The University of Vermont’s Dan Baker led a bilingual team that completed two surveys of farm workers in 2016 and 2018 asking about the stressors in their lives. Results revealed that about a third of the workers reported moderate to extreme stress around housing. He shared that information with the legislature and hosted a series of meetings on the topic with stakeholders such as Migrant Justice, Milk with Dignity, state agencies and farmers.
Another assessment, commissioned by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, found hundreds of spaces that farm workers lived in fell short of generally accepted safety and sanitary standards.
Baker, an associate professor emeritus of international development, noted that significant improvements can be made for $30,000, such as renovating a bathroom, upgrading electrical panels, insulation, new windows and doors, sheet rock, putting in septic systems and repairing roofs and floors. For some farmers, the cost of upgrades will far exceed $30,000. Farmers will have to decide if they want to pay for the rest of the work, he said.
In total, 45 farmers applied for $1.8 million of renovations, said Julie Curtin, director of home ownership at Champlain Housing Trust. Of those, 21 projects on 16 farms — 10 of them dairy farms — were approved, she said.
“I think that’s a strong demonstration that there are a lot of farms who need this extra financial resource to make immediate improvements to their farm worker housing,” Curtin said. “Farms need to bring people to Vermont to do this work and if they can’t provide housing, my sense is they really struggle to get labor.”
Champlain Housing Trust has received half a million dollars in loan capital from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and has issued award letters for the first 16 projects. It has closed on two of the loans, said Curtin.
Most applications for loans were from Addison and Franklin counties, Vermont’s two main dairy counties, according to Baker. But two farms in the Northeast Kingdom are among the first to be awarded loans, said Curtin.
One of the areas of greatest need is in the Northeast Kingdom, where farm worker housing often consists of manufactured homes in need of a lot of work, said Patrick Shattuck, executive director of Rural Edge, which reached out to farmers in the region.
“Getting those posters up in town offices and general stores was a really important component, making sure it hit every town, not just the larger ones,” Shattuck said.
Many of Vermont’s farm workers come from other countries.
“It’s a win-win situation for everybody,” Sprague said of the family’s relationship with their workers. “They can make a pile of money and send the money home and build a life for themselves, but it’s also a key part of today’s dairy operations.”
“In the house where I live, we’re fine because it’s just been renovated,” said Roberto Martinez Posadas, 35, who milks the cows and cleans the stalls at the farm. “Personally, I have no complaints. Everything is fine.”
Speaking in Spanish, Martinez Posadas said that, like the other workers at the farm, he is from the state of Veracruz, in Mexico, where his family works in lemon and orange groves. He is in Vermont alone, which is also typical. His wife, daughter and mother are in Veracruz. Martinez Posadas said the separation is difficult, but life is also hard back home. “You have to find a way forward,” he said.
Sprague plans to finish a second bathroom in the house for the four people who live there, winterize some of the windows, paint part of the outside and put in some insulation. She plans to do a lot of the work herself but will also likely hire a local contractor she has worked with for years. She hopes to do the work this winter.
“It’s super important to provide quality housing for the workers that you have and to maintain it and to make it not just subpar but to make it a nice living arrangement,” said Sprague. “When you do all of that, it creates a nice culture on your farm.”
In some cases, much more significant work will be needed to reach that goal.
Gus Seelig, executive director of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, said there are plans to allocate another round of funding to Champlain Housing Trust. He noted that some housing is in such poor shape that VHCB plans to offer a pilot program to replace the housing entirely. Curtin added that farmers who house their workers in their barns also need to build new housing.
Baker said he hopes this project will be the start of a long-term commitment to improving farm worker housing.
“I’m really excited that this is finally moving,” he said.