- Source: Tulare labor camps rent strike
The Tulare Labor Camps rent strike was a strike by tenants of the Woodville and Linnell farm labor camps in 1965 against rent increases by the Tulare County Housing Authority and the inhabitable conditions of the tin houses they lived in.
The strikers consisted of the agricultural workers, headed by the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) alongside support by numerous civil rights and student organizations. It lasted three years and successfully stopped the proposed rent increase, and led to the construction of new houses to replace the tin huts.
It also bolstered the membership and organizing of NFWA, and would feed into the organizing behind the Delano grape strike and play a role in helping to publicize it.
Background
One of the primary factors of the rent strike was the inhospitable living conditions for farm workers. In 1938 the Farm Security Administration built 440 one roomed tin shacks for farm workers in the Woodville and Linnell farm labor camps. All had tin roofs and either tin or wood siding.
They were provided initially without charge to farm workers in 1938 by the FSA and the shacks were only planned to be used for 10 years. The housing was then leased to a Growers Association in 1948 for $1 for the whole camp, who then charged rents as high as $5 a week for each shelter for two years. In 1950 the shacks were passed to the Tulare County Housing Authority, who continued to charge rent.
Jim Drake and Gilbert Padilla ending up visiting the camps in 1963 to distribute free contraceptives. During this they saw the inhabitable conditions of the shacks. Padilla noted, “I was shocked to see those little shacks, those tin shacks…. It was a disgrace to have those people in those labor camps. Especially in those little tin shacks.”
By 1964 rents for the shacks ranged from $18.50 for the first cabin, and $5 additional cost for each extra cabin, up to $38 a month. A max of 4 residents were allowed for each cabin. With some families having 8, 10, 12 children.
On March 30, 1965, the Tulare County Authority announced a scheduled rent increase up to a 47% to go in effect in June, precipitating the rent strike. The rent for he first cabin would've increased to $25 for the first cabin and $10 for each additional cabin.
Following the announcement, Padilla stood on top of a car at the Woodville Farm Labor camp and convinced 300 tenants to rent strike in June, when the rent increase would go into effect.
In addition to cancelling the rent increase, improving the conditions of the housing was a crucial demand of the strikers. The previously described shacks had no solid doors or windows, and no indoor plumbing or sewage.
For access to water, it had to be carried in five gallon jugs from shared fire hydrants that served 6-7 huts. In addition bathing and toilet facilities were communal, with one toilet house for each 60 units of housing. The showers were also in operation during part of the day, and shut down at 9:30pm every day.
The temperature inside the shacks also became inhospitable during the day. By about eight o'clock in the morning residents had to leave the shack. As a result, the tenants had to cook their lunch before then at dawn, when they still had access and couldn't cook dinner until 7:30 to 8:00 pm once the shacks had cooled down enough. Families would often place old wet blankets and mattresses on top of the shacks in an attempt to keep them cool.
"The weather is about a 100° outside and it's about 130° or 150° inside. We can't stay inside."Gary Bellow, a lawyer and activist who often represented farmworkers from the NFWA, in a 1999 oral history interview described their experience visiting the labor camps:
"You could always tell a kid that grew up in Linnell/Woodville because they had these open gas heaters and every kid that ever grew up in Linnell/Woodville had scars on their arms from falling against these open gas heaters. And, it needed -- we needed better housing."
The labor camps also lacked sidewalks, causing deep mud during rainfall, making it difficult to access the fire hydrants for water. This aspect is of note, as it played role in inspiring the flood in the ending of The Grapes of Wrath, after the 1938 flood in Tulare County. Both farm labor camps were the kind John Steinbeck had modeled their setting off. A survey of the Woodville hut found 51 out of 55 huts had holes in the roof, walls or both.
Reverend Jim Drake would also discover that the camp's were only built to last ten years and that they had been condemned by the Tulare County Health and Building Departments. Gilbert Padilla, Jim Drake and David Havens would then get legal advice from James Herndon. He advised them to have tenants pay into an escrow account instead of paying directly to TCHA, in order to prevent eviction.
The Tulare Housing Authority responded to residents, claiming that the rent raises were needed to fix the camps. While the residents replied that over the last 10 years, the housing commission a non profit by law, had made an excess profit of $130,000 and that the camp didn't need to be fixed, it needed to be completely rebuilt.
On May 21, before the official withholding of rent by residents, 125 people attended the monthly meeting of the Tulare County Housing Authority to protest the proposed rent increase. Showing up before the meeting started with protest signs and picketing outside the meeting place, and then went inside when it started.
Chairman R.D. Dewhirst of the Housing authority, would place blame on the tenants, saying if they had been working instead of attending the meeting they would be making more money then the rent increase at the housing camps would cost them. Gilbert Padilla, would demand for the camp to be turned over to the renters, as Ferris R. Sherman, executive director of the Housing Authority, once claimed the renters could have the camps. Dewhirst claimed in response that it wasn't serious. Jim Drake accused the directors of enabling inhabitable housing to continue in the county by attempting to make it legally acceptable to raise rent in substandard housing.
Strike
Starting on the 1st of June, the day of the scheduled rent increase, 500 to 600 farm workers went on rent strike. They stopped paying rent to the housing authority and instead deposited their rent at the old rate into a local Bank of America account. The strike was organized by the National Farm Workers Association alongside the California Migrant Ministry. Principally Gilbert Padilla of the NFWA and Jim Drake of the Migrant Ministry.
On July 16 the tenants organized a six-mile march from Linnell to Visalia to bring attention to their conditions. A nun led at the front of the march in a white tunic.
The strike featured significant collaboration of farm workers with other groups, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who heavily publicized the strike in their newspaper The Movement. The American Friends Service Committee would also sponsor college students to help families inside the camps, who themselves would also join the rent strike.
Chris Hartmire of the California Migrant Ministry would be the one who had initially proposed the march, having marched in Selma 3 months earlier. In addition members of CORE's LA chapter, SNCC, Citizens for Farm Labor, the Welfare Rights Organization of Oakland, Student Committee for Agricultural Labor, and the California Migrant Ministry all had participants in the march. Those in the NFWA broadly viewed much of their struggle as foundationally intertwined with the civil rights struggle by Black Americans, as such cross-pollination between each movement was common.
The rent strikers had several proposals for the labor camp following the start of the strike. Including suggesting running the camp on a collective basis through a tenant council. In addition they demanded the complete investigation of the financial procedure and camp's financial accounts.
The marchers, consisting of tenants and supporters, were headed towards the regularly scheduled meeting place of the Tulare County Housing Authority. Once they arrived at the offices, they were told the meeting was not being held today, because not enough member's of the housing authority were present.
Then the march continued to the Visalia Presbyterian Church, where the workers held a rally where Labor Journalist Paul Jacobs spoke in support of the rent strike, and a petition was signed by the strikers. The petition read as follows:
"Residents of Woodville and Linnell who marched six miles to meet the Tulare Housing Authority and who were ignored, ask the Tulare County Board of Supervisors to intervene and ask them to lower the rent in the substandard housing that they own and operate."
After this they continued to the Tulare County Courthouse where they submitted the petition. On the event Padilla noted in retrospect, "[this] was one of the first marches of Chicano farmworkers."In a letter written by Gilbert Padilla -intended as template of the basic events for those to send complaints to California Gov Edmund G. Brown- would criticize the Linnell Farm Labor camp manager claiming:
"[the camp manager had] handed out [pamphets] while working for the Authority, which attack the United Nations, the President of the United States, the National Council of Churches, and 'Martin Luther King and His Civil Rights Urinators.' The fact that the Housing Authority employs a man with such segregationistic and anti-American ideas symbolizes the degree of corruption found in the Tulare County Housing Authority."
On August 14, 1965, it was announced that the Assembly Industrial Relations Committee would investigate the rent strikes at the farm labor camps. Chairman, Mervyn M. Dymally said of the issue:
"The fact that this county housing authority raised rents for these tin shack homes of the poorest people in our abundently rich San Joaquin Valley, in the face of a reserve fund surplus of more than $130,000, and refuses to discuss or negotiate the issues involved with the tenants raises a reaI question about local housing authority operations"
On August 19, the Tulare County Farmers Association called for Tulare Housing Authority to take immediate steps to replace the metal hut housing with more habitable conditions. Public pressure and the rent strike had also led Sherman, of the housing authority and the rent strikers to sit down and discuss, with two people from the state government to mediate. No significant progress was made.
That same month, the County Health and Building inspectors investigated the camps and determined they were not fit for human habitation, officially condemning the shacks, and the operation to be illegal. Ferris Sherman and Earl Rouse, heads of the Housing Authority still attempted to evict the protestors through the courts. The inspectors found 51 building and health violations. However, in September, Judge Paul Eymen of the Tulare County Superior Court ruled in favor of the tenants, ruling no rent increase or eviction was justified and that the housing authority had to repair or replace the housing within six months.The tenants were represented by tenants Manuel Ponce, John Delgado and Daniel Delgado. With lawyers James Herndon and Carlos LaRoche defending them in court. The tenants agreed tentatively to pay back rent, at the $18 old rent (and $5 for each additional cabin), from the escrow account, the Tenants' Trust Fund, which it had been being paid into during the strike.
The rent strike had ended up costing the Tulare County Housing Authority over $7,000 (equivalent to $67,679 in 2023) up to this point.
Tenants also stated, that if the conditions didn't improve, the strike would shortly resume. Additionally the County Board of Supervisors specifically set the six-month deadline for a plan or start on building better housing, with criminal negligence charges also being considered.
The rent strikers, in the face of no improvements, did not pay the back rent until later in March 1968 when a final settlement was reached.
On December 2, 1965, a hearing was held in the Visalia Courthouse discussing the conditions in the camp.
By 1966, $1.2 million would be given to the TCHA by the federal government to construct livable housing. Half of which was given and the other half being lent with an expectation of repayment.
Following concerns of the condemned huts being torn down, leaving the tenants no where to live, the board members expanded the grace period three more months from when it was set to expire on July 1, 1967. Thus preventing the Tulare County Housing Authority's planned eviction. 200 new dwellings would be set to replace the huts, with the project contract to be awarded on September 25. In addition tenants had concerns about the planned monthly rent for the new buildings, $60 a month which they would be unable to pay.
On March, 1968 the rent strike had officially concluded, with a final agreement reached:
This agreement reversed the proposed new rent of $60 for the new units, instead to be set at $20 a month. Ernesto Loredo, leader for the last two years of the rent strike, noted:
"They had us beaten several times, but because the people were tough we were able to force the hand of the Authority. We have shown them that farm workers are not weak just because we are poor. When we stick together for a single goal, we have a power equal to any."
Aftermath
The rent strike successfully reversed the proposed rent increases and led to the construction of permanent habitable houses. The organizing established from the strike remained and tenants continued to challenge the housing authority when rent raises and fees they felt were unjust were attempted, including in 1971, 1974 and 1985.
The strike played an important role in catalyzing farm worker families within the camps becoming a core of NFWA support and involvement. Gary Bellow, a lawyer who provided legal advice with the rent strike case, noted:
"And many of them joined the Union after that because they liked the experience of collective action, they saw what it could do with each other."
Cesar Chavez would also later describe the effect of the rent strike:
Short of getting into an agricultural strike, the rent strike, which lasted through the summer, was one of the best ways of educating farm workers that there was a union concerned with their economic interests. It was one of the first demonstrations where the black eagle flew.In August 1965, while the rent strike was still ongoing, the roots of the grape strike begun, at Rancho Blanco. Many who had participated in the rent strike would come to support or participate in the labor strike.
See also
2024 Kansas City metropolitan area rent strike
Further reading
Online archives of El Malcriado & SNCC's The Movement is available via the Farmworker Documentation Project at University of California, San Diego; Both which heavily documented the strike at the time.
Online archive of Farm Labor, a small magazine which was run by the Citizens for Farm Labor. At the San Fran State Archives.