Following years of negotiations, Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Division, or Oregon OSHA, is updating farmworker housing rules that some advocates have said are “alarmingly outdated”.

The requirements include sweeping changes, such as mandating kitchens. The current rules don’t require farmworker housing to have a kitchen — though Oregon OSHA officials say most of the state’s registered labor housing does have some sort of kitchen facility. Other changes require houses to have at least 50 square feet per bed in sleeping rooms with bunk beds; currently the rules allow for 40 square feet per bed.

But farm groups say complying with those structural changes will be costly, and could put smaller family farms out of business.

Farmers worry cost to meet housing requirements will force cuts elsewhere

“After years of devastating crop losses and brutal market conditions, taking on massive loans isn’t just unrealistic — it’s operationally fatal,” Angela Bailey, president of the Oregon Farm Bureau, wrote in a statement. “Meanwhile, off-farm workforce housing is virtually non-existent in many rural areas. So, where exactly does Oregon OSHA expect workers to live during the critical harvest season? This is a disaster in the making for family agriculture in Oregon.”

At the end of 2024, Oregon had 519 registered agricultural labor housing units, according to data from Oregon OSHA. Much of that housing is in Hood River and Wasco counties.

Lesley Tamura, a pear farmer in Hood River, and the chair of the Columbia Fruit Growers Association, said she agrees that farmworkers should have safe, clean and accessible housing.

“We want to be able to provide that for them,” she said. “But one of the challenges in these rulemaking processes is that it’s one thing to create a set of rules as a state agency. It’s another to be the ones responsible for implementing those rules, especially when you cannot afford to do so.”

In public documents submitted to Oregon OSHA, some housing operators estimated that to replace the lost beds — because of the change in square footage required per bed — they would need to expand current housing or build new at a cost of about $26,300 per bed. Some estimated costs for new plumbing for toilets, sinks and septic tanks and electric infrastructure at over $300,000. That’s a cost many farmers — who typically cannot set prices for their crops — can’t swallow, Tamura said.

She added the rules could likely lead to less housing and more workforce shortages during peak harvest periods.

“These rules are not helping to solve the housing crisis in this state; they are adding to it,” she said.

Martha Sonato, a legislative and policy advocate at Oregon Law Center, said the changes are a labor justice issue and about providing more dignified, safer housing for workers.

She said the changes came from several rounds of outreach to farmworkers, who often described farmworker housing as lacking basic amenities. A 2023 Oregon Housing and Community Services Department report found poor housing conditions and inadequate bathrooms were the most common problems that farmworkers described with on-farm housing.

While the new rules address some of those issues, like increasing the amount of toilets per person in a house and requiring locking shower stalls and changing rooms, Sonato said she still finds the new rules disappointing.

“We still remain deeply concerned with the low standards of the rule,” she said. “There are some major priorities that weren’t included in these final rules and that we had brought up many, many times.”

She points out the rules still allow for portable toilets to be used instead of flushing toilets. And while the new rules do require kitchens, they don’t require for them to be inside a house. Instead they’re allowed to be outdoors, provided they’re covered or sealed with a mesh screen.

She also points out Oregon OSHA did not address the groups concern about housing being located a certain distance away from fields out of caution from pesticide drift.

“That’s where people eat, that’s where they sleep, and so there is that very real potential of pesticide drift,” Sonato said.

Oregon could help with costs, but it may not be enough

To cover the costs of upgrades employers will have to make, regulators will plan to make $5 million available through the Oregon Department of Agriculture to assist farm owners for the cost of compliance. There’s also the Oregon Agriculture Workforce Housing Tax Credit — a program designed to offset the costs for employers who invest in agricultural labor housing.

But Tamura said $5 million is not much, especially with high costs in construction right now.

“It sounds like a lot of money,” she said. “It is a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of how much housing we provide and the cost of these upgrades, it is nothing.”

Oregon Farm Bureau officials also point to an eligibility requirement in the $5 million program from the state’s department of agriculture, which excludes operators that house seasonal foreign farmworkers under the federal H2A agricultural program to apply for the money.

Sonato told OPB that provision was to ensure the money benefited local workers who sometimes live year-round in on-farm housing.

As for what comes next, some of the rules will come into effect at the end of March. Other requirements, such as increased square footage per bed, won’t go into effect until January 2028.

Some farm groups are urging Gov. Tina Kotek to reconsider the adopted rules and to work with agricultural labor housing providers to develop a “true compromise.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/15/oregon-farmworker-housing-rules-farmers-workforce-shortages/