By Guy Page
A bill introduced January 16 would require farmers to rent housing to workers hired through a proposed state-funded directory.
H810, establishing the Agricultural Workforce and Housing Directory, would require farmers participating in a state-operated employment directory to be landlords for their farm workers – including workers who are illegal immigrants.
Specifically the bill “proposes to require the Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets to establish and administer the Agricultural Workforce and Housing Directory, where a farm in Vermont could list available employment opportunities on that farm. Farms listing jobs on the Directory would be required to provide employees with affordable housing on the farm or off the farm.”
The bill does not distinguish between farm workers who are working legally in the United States and those who are here as “undocumented workers” AKA illegal immigrants.
Most hired farm-workers who live on farm are migrant workers, according to a 2021 report to a state housing board.
About 2,000 hired farmworkers in Vermont live in housing provided on or immediately adjacent to the farm. The majority of on-farm housing is connected to dairy farms, according to a 2021 report to the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. Well over half of hired farmworkers who live on-farm are migrant workers. Aside from those contracted through the federal H-2A program to work seasonally, the overwhelming number of migrant workers lack the required authorizations to work in the US.
The housing directory would be free to the user, and would be established with a $50,000 allocation in next year’s state budget. “Housing provided under this section shall be safe, clean, and fit for human habitation and shall comply with the requirements of applicable building, housing, and health regulations. A farm operator shall be required to comply with this subsection only if the operator is providing the housing to an employee as the landlord. Any housing under this section shall be governed by the requirements for residential rental agreement under 9 V.S.A chapter 137,” the bill states.
Lead sponsors of H810 are Rep. Esme Cole and Robert “Bobby” Farlice-Rubio. Other sponsors are Reps. Peter Anthony, Sarah “Sarita” Austin, Tesha Buss, Melanie Carpenter, Seth Chase Leonora Dodge, Caleb Elder, Golrang Garofano, Leslie Goldman, Rodney Graham, Josie Leavitt, Jed Lipski, Brian Minier, John O’Brien, Henry Pearl, Mike Rice, Heather Surprenant, David Templeman, Dara Torre, Dane Whitman, and Jonathan Williams.
Several sponsors – including Graham, O’Brien, Pearl, and Surprenant – are or have been working farmers. Graham is the only GOP co-sponsor. Cole also has co-sponsored a bill requiring the state to offer professional licensing regardless of immigration status.
The State of Vermont offers extensive employment and hiring assistance to both employers and would-be employees, through the Vermont Department of Labor. For example, the DOL Joblink is an interactive ‘jobs board’ connecting workers and employers.
But neither DOL nor any other government employment assistance program known to VDC require participating employers to provide employee housing as a condition of their participation.
The bill does not appeal to Agriculture committee member Charles Wilson (R-Lyndon). “H.810 Proposes to require (actually force) the Secretary of Agriculture, Food & Markets to establish and administer an agricultural work force ( whoever they may be) and Housing Directory to effectively cause farmers be required to provide employees with affordable housing on or off the farm,” Wilson said in a recent statement. “What they intentionally leave out, is that this is all at taxpayer’s expense! Socialism. This is at a time when Vermont cannot adjust the State budget.”
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Categories: Agriculture, Housing, Legislation
This is calculated. The goal seems, in part, to create a loyal army of workers to sway local elections and to use force.
OH it will cripple the farmers, it’s the plan, have control of the food, makes people compliant rather quickly….
How can any employer be forced to provide housing??????
And if they have a problem tenant, it will take years to get out and the place will be destroyed….
They know all of this. It’s part of the you will own nothing and be happy program, from the United Nations…..Build Back Better…..a better Marxist government is still a cesspool…..
The only employer that I’m aware of that must provide housing or remuneration is the U.S. military and Coast Guard.
Who I would like to hear from are farmers, particularly dairy farmers.
Any chance VDC might follow up with said article Mr. Page?
Respectfully,
Pam Baker
Pam: A free market handles this circumstance as well as any legislation can. In fact, a free market always does better. For the last two summers, for example, I’ve had two young (and legal) migrant workers stay at my house. And the local farm where they work manages the housing for the more than two dozen other (legal!) migrant workers employed there every summer. Each individual circumstance differs from the next. And each individual employer can better accommodate these individual circumstances better than can ‘the State’. As I mentioned below. This is all about our legislators stalking ever more tax revenue sources to fund their totalitarian habit. Again, it’s a racket’. It has nothing to do with making life as we know it better.
Growing the bureaucracy in order to control the minutia of farmers lives. Next the state will be taking agricultural land for failure to comply, just like has happened in Holland, Sri Lanka, and Germany. Resist before resistance becomes futile.
I so agree with you Cathy. I also agree with Rep. Wright. None again- State Leg. trying to pass one of their issues onto farmers, ie. housing!
I’ll file this under “WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?”
Communism as defined by Karl Marx abolishes private property rights. This isn’t the first bill to threatens property rights, as demonstrated by the Renters Bill of Rights, squatters writers and landlords being restricted from evicting tenants during COVID-19. These types of bills are being adopted all over the country. The United Nations is clear on how to address what it calls “the many unnatural inequities” that exist in society. The way to address these inequities is by creating intentional policies that circumvent them. The UN defines equality broadly as understand within the socialist and socialist democratic contracts. Welcome to the New America designed to serve the New Americans.
“Housing provided under this section shall be safe, clean, and fit for human habitation and shall comply with the requirements of applicable building, housing, and health regulations.”
How about the tenants’ requirements to maintain the housing they’re being provided in the same way according to this set of rules? What are the penalties if they don’t?
PS – Rhetorical question. And most of you already know I do not revisit my comments to see who responds — mainly b/c I have my say and that’s it. I don’t care to do back ‘n forths, no offense. I just don’t have the time. Besides, approximately 0% of everything we complain about doesn’t get remedied, anyhow. So there’s that, also.
state has far too many regulations and is becoming too involved in day to day business and life.they loved their opportunity to play boss during Covid and hate to give up any power
is a bed in the hay loft better than sleeping in a tent out side in the winter/// if you want to work, the farm is not that bad/// i did this when i was very young///
There’s something about this that seems illegal. It’s another case of the Vermont legislature engaging in criminal acts in violation of the US laws and Constitutional rights.
We mandate that illegal aliens are housed in this state while Vermonters are sleeping in their Subarus because we don’t have housing for our locals????
WTF????
We are already housing drug dealers by providing their sugar mama’s free housing.
Hey Where the F is the VTGOP?????????
To answer your question, nowhere. No one on the right is serious about governing as evidenced by the rejection of the border bill they wrote.As a result, you won’t attract good candidates, you get people like Greg Thayer and Malloy who are toxic to normal people. The All that matters on the right is a desire to win a culture war that long passed you by because the overwhelming majority of conservative (not republican)policies are absolutely repugnant to us that aren’t ensconced in the Fox News/Facebook silo
The boarder bill amounted to open boarders and was in violation of immigration laws.
I will say it again. These legislators have too much time under the golden dome. They look to crazy towns like San Francisco for guidance for a new bill or two to introduce in Vermont. There is no real think going on in Montpelier, just allot of
“how can I justify my existence” or what new bill can I introduce. The proof is in the
800 bills that were introduced and or hanging on the walls. These are the same people who want us to eat a 20% increase in property taxes for the school budgets,
and provide them (legislators) with a 100% increase in pay with a golden benefits package that they do not have today. This is all so insane, and Vermonters are just not paying attention. Some messaging is reaching some people, but many do not have a clue what is coming at us. Our state gov is now the largest employer in Vermont. At one time it was IBM with about 9,000 people. How did this happen when we have had a decrease in school kids by about 20,000 or more compared to 15 years ago??
The super majority in Montpelier is slowly threading the noose for all of us.
As a landlord I am appalled that we would tell farmers (perhaps one of the hardest
occupations to be in) how to manage their farm help. This is one more thread in
the noose.
Montpelier needs to meet every other year like Texas does and they need
to focus on safety and infrastructure first. Second should be a balanced live within our means budget. They should never be allowed to submit 800 bills (as they have now) and should have a limited number of days to get the job done. BTW Texas only pays their legislators something like $600 per month. Vermont pays more than that per week. We are paying $812 a week, plus some expenses and 65 cents a mile. Our legislators are asking for full time pay of $1210 per week plus salary adjustments. They are looking at a full time year round legislation.
Gov Scott vetoed that bill but you can bet they will come back with something pared down just to get the foot in the door. We have extraordinary educational expenses along with a high cost of living in Vermont and our legislators are asking for a 100% pay increase for all the work required to put up those 800 bills they have introduced.
Forgive them for they know not what they do…. bull manure they know exactly what they are doing.
Cool! Another govt program with loads of government employees wasting money 💰. They just don’t get it
They did it with wildlife, now with farm workers.
As Joey Avocadoes aptly stated last week, “You can’t make this stuff up.”
https://vermontdailychronicle.com/bill-would-re-home-bears-de-home-people/amp/
H.810 – That would require farmers to be landlords for Illegal Immigrants. As I see the list of Reprenatives sponsoring this bill. HAVE THEY ALL LOST THEIR MIND ❓ The very point of being Illegal is you are breaking the law. Federal Imagination laws, which makes all Illegal Aliens in the U.S. guilty of a felony. Vermont legislation wants farmers to house people that have willfully participated in a felony. Seems like the writers of the bill would be aiding and abetting a felony, and so would every farmer who houses the illegals. Vermont legislation does not have the authority to change Federal Immigration Law. The U.S. House of Representatives just impeached someone for not following Imagination law, and allowing Illegal Aliens coming across the border. Do we need to impeach some of our Vermont Representatives too ?
The Vermont Legislature is writing law to allow the State of Vermont to commit extortion, bribery, and treason (aiding and abetting criminals, which does include illegal entry of unvetted foreigners into the USA.) We no longer have a representative legislative body. We have an installed, belligerent, enemy of the State committing high crimes and misdemeanors with impunity. Do we have a military to uphold their oath and apply the law of war manual or no?
Ridiculous. So the farmer, whose barn isn’t painted (because it costs to much) will now, by law, under building, zoning, local and state control, BUILD the applicable amount of housing and then be forced to make it “affordable” (NOT PROFITABLE) to their workers, then be taxed on rental revenue and property value and subject to housing regulations…. all while the state controls prices the farmers charge for their products.
This is a clear cut example of government over reach and the necessity of their removal from office….
It’s not the law (i.e., building or zoning codes), or that the State’s ‘control’ has a beneficial effect on anything that interests our legislators. It’s the money. The fees and the kickbacks.
In fact, the more money spent, the less beneficial the circumstance. One would think we’d have figured this out by now. The State (the legislators and the crony lobbyists who enable them) inevitably, and for our own good of course, takes care of us because we can’t take care of ourselves – and charges us an ‘arm and a leg’ for a service we’d rather not be forced to use. It’s a ‘protection racket’… no different from the storied circumstances provided by corrupt police or mafia ‘wise guys’ in virtually every crime novel, movie, and TV show ever produced.
And we vote these crooks into office. Go figure. It seems that we’re addicted to having something to complain about while not accepting responsibility for our personal choices.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive… This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” ― C.S. Lewis
It concentrates migrants who can then be used as demonstrators, etc.
2A was made for tyrants like the ones (regime) in power now.
Picture: Zero-energy modular housing installed on Vermont farm by Efficiency Vermont. Wait, WTF? Why are dollars being stolen from me, on my electric bill, to provide free housing to illegals, and rent assets for farmers. Highway robbery.
I grew up on a farm in the NEK – I remember in the 70’s my Dad saying – “The government needs to stay out of the farming business.” Boy – was he right. Here are their e-mail addresses – WRITE THEM! panthony@leg.state.vt.us; bfarlice-rubio@leg.state.vt.us; celder@leg.state.vt.us; rgarofano@leg.state.vt.us; lgoldman@leg.state.vt.us; rgraham@leg.state.vt.us; jleavitt@leg.state.vt.us; jlipsky@leg.state.vt.us; bminier@leg.state.vt.us; ecole@leg.state.vt.us; saustin@leg.state.vt.us; tbuss@leg.state.vt.us; mcarpenter@leg.state.vt.us; tbuss@leg.state.vt.us; schase@leg.state.vt.us; ldodge@leg.state.vt.us; jobrien@leg.state.vt.us; hpearl@leg.state.vt.us; mrice@leg.state.vt.us; hsurprenant@leg.state.vt.us; dtempleman@leg.state.vt.us; dtorre@leg.state.vt.us; dwhitman@leg.state.vt.us; jwilliams@leg.state.vt.us