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Published on 01/25/1999 All articles from this issue

Los Altos day worker dilemma

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue

Town Crier Staff Writer

Dozens of men continue to hang out on street corners along El Camino Real

The task force

Street-corner groups of 50 to 100 men, hanging out along El Camino Real, have led to complaints from business owners and customers of loitering and littering, drinking and fighting - and a request for the cities to take action.

They are. The cities of Mountain View and Los Altos established a joint task force in September 1998, which included two city council members from each city. Their goal: to get the people off the streets.

The group met all fall. They listened to experts. They visited worker centers in southern and northern California. At their final meeting on Jan. 14, they agreed on recommendations that will be coming back to both city councils in February or March.

The first recommendation is that the two cities have an ordinance making it illegal to solicit work from sidewalks and public space, said King Lear, a Los Altos city councilman who served on the task force.

But Mountain View and Los Altos need "common ordinances with common enforcement," said Los Altos Mayor Lou Becker, who also served on the task force. "You must enforce the same on both sides of the street (El Camino Real)."

Becker said the cities have agreed to work together.

Elizabeth Keller, executive director of St. Joseph the Worker Center, at Jordan Avenue and El Camino Real in Los Altos, listed other recommendations from the task force.

They include asking the cities to help with outreach to employers, so they don't look for workers along the street; coordinating enforcement with both police departments that begins with education for the workers; an alternative place for the workers to go.

Here's the dilemma. The nearby St. Joseph the Worker Center is already bursting at the seams.

And "The center can't continue without funding," Keller said. So the recommendations include suggesting that the St. Joseph Center apply to Los Altos and Mountain View, as well as to other cities served by the center, for Community Development Block Grant funds.

The Worker Center

The St. Joseph the Worker Center opened its doors in Los Altos in 1996 as a place off the street corners for day laborers while they waited for work. And it has been hugely successful.

A staff of 2.75 plus volunteers, with a budget of $160,000, offer English classes, computer training, health counseling and job readiness courses. Funding for the center comes from grants from foundations all over the Bay Area, from as far away as Berkeley.

The center recently received one from Sun Microsystems to offer advanced training to workers, with the goal of bringing 10 per month into permanent jobs.

The Los Altos center and the one in San Jose are the only two in Santa Clara County, Keller said. There are none to the north until San Francisco.

The San Jose center has a budget of $120,000 and a city ordinance that does not allow laborers to look for work from sidewalks.

Becker visited the San Jose center "and I did not see any people standing on the street," he said. "They have an ordinance, and they enforce it."

In the Los Altos center, between 8 and 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 20, more than 50 people were getting help.

Leonard McCord, a 76-year-old retired Spanish teacher from the Palo Alto Unified School District, taught English to a group of seven men.

"I'm pleased to be a part of this whole activity of getting itinerant workers off the street," McCord said. The 45-year Los Altos resident said he's volunteering because "I was told from the pulpit of my church (Sunnyvale Presbyterian) to go beyond the walls and go out into the community."

In another room, Nancy Hall, a Mountain View resident and teacher from the adult education program of the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, taught a slightly more advanced English class.

Out in the entry office area, 17 men had signed in for work. Three waited in chairs. Teresa Fernandez, from the Palo Alto and Mountain View-based MayView Community Clinic, talked to them about health concerns.

"A lot of issues come with not having a job," she said. "We see a lot of depression. In 1970 I came from Mexico. I know exactly what's it like to not know the system, just by being new in the country."

Next to Fernandez, a staff member fielded phone calls. Behind a screen, another staff member interviewed a mother and her children to see what their needs were.

"The essential is to get them work," Keller said. "But we want to help (the day workers) move out of poverty, to change their lives."

The numbers show the center is working toward that.

In October, November and December of 1997, the average number of workers who came to the center each day was 13.6, 15.3 and 13.1. A year later, in October, November and December of 1998, the numbers were 21.9, 20.1 and 16.5.

The numbers of new employers using the center also grew dramatically: from 12, 21 and 10 in October, November and December of 1997, to 82, 83 and 41, a year later.

The street corner

Andres Perez got lucky. A Palo Alto employer needing a worker tapped Perez to help hang Sheetrock for a day.

Perez, a 34-year-old Mountain View man from Mexico, had been standing with seven others in the early morning damp on Jan. 20. The men, aged 20 to 47, waited for work on the corner of Sherwood Lane and El Camino Real in Los Altos.

"I pay good," said the Sheetrock man who declined to give his name. He pointed at Perez and said he'd like him. The employer, a 30-something man in the midst of a remodel, said he'd need Perez until about 4 p.m. He offered between $70 to $80, plus lunch and a lunch break.

Soon it may be illegal to wait for work from sidewalks or public space in Los Altos and Mountain View.

But they aren't all coming to the center. In fact, 50 to 100 workers can be seen on any given day, in groups on El Camino Real, from San Antonio Road to El Monte Avenue.

One recent morning, Keller, who speaks fluent Spanish, visited groups on the street corners, as a Town Crier reporter and photographer followed along.

The men with Perez call themselves the Mountain View group from Mexico. On another corner, are men from San Jose; in another spot is a group from Central America.

And they protect their corners.

"They don't let other guys here," Keller said. "Some from San Jose are notorious for drinking. This is a clean corner, and they protect it."

Word was already out on the street that an ordinance may be coming. The workers had questions for Keller. She reassured them that they could come to the center and that the police would educate first before enforcing.

A man waiting with Perez, 47-year-old Martin, drove a bus in Mexico. But he can't here, he told Keller, because he doesn't have a license.

"I told him to come to the center, and maybe we could find a scholarship for him to get his license," she said.

Keller, a strong, gentle woman, is optimistic about results from the task force.

"I think it's positive," she said. "We're working with the cities. I feel more like we're partners, that we're working together."