The Seed for Migrant Housing

There was plenty of bad news for San Diego County in Gov. George Deukmejian’s budget cuts Friday. But one small, yet important, appropriation survived the ax: $500,000 in seed money for migrant farm-worker housing.

To receive the money, local government will have to kick in another 25%. And housing advocates plan to leverage the money with federal and private contributions to produce up to $3 million.

That’s still a drop in the bucket, considering that some estimates put the homeless migrant population as high as 15,000.

But it’s a start.

Now it will be up to local government to get serious about finding sites for the housing. Much of the responsibility for coordinating that effort will fall on the county, which in the past has used a lack of land as an excuse for not pursuing migrant housing.

Finding land will be difficult, politically and financially. But it’s not impossible, if government and community leaders make it the priority they have told the governor it was.