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The most important healthcare workers in this country—entry-level workers who do the caregiving and provide preventive services—are often paid poverty-level wages and provided insufficient benefits and supports, said panelists at a Fresno event in the statewide Zócalo Public Square series, “What Is a Good Job Now?”

As a result, the panelists said, there aren’t enough such workers. So, improving health care should start with improving caregiving and other entry-level health care jobs—with higher wages, better benefits like paid leave and health insurance, and career pathways that allow nurse assistants, for example, to become registered nurses.

“A lot of jobs are invisible in our health care system, even though they are very important,” said University of Minnesota health policy and management scholar Janette Dill, who studies the public health workforce. What undervalued jobs like home health care aides or nursing assistants have in common is that most of the workers are women of color, or immigrant women, she added.

“It really speaks to the fact that women’s labor is undervalued in our society,” Dill said.

The event, presented in partnership with the James Irvine Foundation and focused on healthcare, was moderated by Cresencio Rodriguez-Delgado, news director of KVPR (Valley Public Radio). It took place at the Fresno Center, a multi-faceted community service space on the south side of Fresno.

He began by asking panelist Helda Pinzón-Perez, a Fresno State public health professor with expertise in the health issues of rural areas and vulnerable populations, to define the problem with health care jobs.

Pinzón-Perez answered that California and the country badly need more health workers for three reasons. Our aging population needs more care. Rural and underserved communities lack providers. And we all need more preventive care, and caregiving and health education.

But we can’t get more health workers if we’re not willing to make those jobs more appealing to workers.

Asked by Rodriguez-Delgado about what her Fresno State students who are going to health want from their jobs, Pinzón-Perez emphasized that they have many desires and expectations. Among them are competitive salaries, the chance to grow in their careers, and enough free time to attend to their families and their own health.

And most of all, she added, “they are also looking for opportunities to apply what they learn to serve the community.”

A frontline caregiver on the panel, Martha Valladarez, noted that she hadn’t pursued the job. Instead, after years as one of Fresno’s first female letter carriers, she became an in-home supportive services provider to care for her youngest daughter, who has Down Syndrome.

She said she had received no training in caregiving upon taking the job. And she expressed frustrations with its pay—getting a raise required nine years of lobbying Fresno County. And it has been a struggle to secure vital benefits, around leave and retirement. To advocate for herself and other caregivers, Valladarez joined the union, SEIU, that represents in-home supportive service workers.

“We deserve a lot more and we’re going to fight,” she said.

She strongly backed state legislation to raise the minimum wage of healthcare workers to $25 per hour. But she also said that a big issue is that caregivers aren’t paid for all the hours they work—because it’s hard to say no to the people you care for. “This is a job where everyone knows you’re not going to leave,” she said.

Dill, the University of Minnesota scholar of health policy and workforce, emphasized the high stakes of improving health care jobs. The health sector is now the largest employer in the country; health care has transformed distressed manufacturing economies in the Rust Belt and other American places.

But those workers often have to work more than one job because they don’t get full-time hours, or health insurance of their own. They don’t have schedules that allow for respites or breaks that are vital for their mental health, she said. And health care jobs have physical demands that can make them quite dangerous; nursing assistants, she said, have relatively high rates of occupational injuries and infections.

Illustration by Soobin Kim.

Near the end of the conversation, panelists took questions from the audience attending in-person at the Fresno Center.

Rodriguez-Delgado, the moderator, talked about the closure late last year of Madera Community Hospital, in the community to the north of Fresno. “That probably sent signals to people who want to go into health care that it seems unstable,” he said.

In response, Dill noted that hospital closures and the failures to invest in health care personnel are often a function of choices made by “payers”—insurance companies, that tend to value fancy care more than daily hands-on care.

Pinzón-Perez said that mental health care for everyone, including front-line health workers, is important, and more might be done with the evolution of telehealth. Healthcare workers also need to do more work and tasks that are rewarding and seem meaningful, she said.

Pinzón-Perez and Dill both said that there had been an exodus of entry-level health care workers since the pandemic, with higher salaries being offered in other sectors. Those departures have made workloads even more intense in healthcare, Dill said.

Pinzon-Perez, an immigrant from Colombia, said that one way to produce more health workers is to utilize more immigrants who arrive in the U.S. with medical training.

Dill said that extensive data research shows that union membership can also improve the pay of health workers. She added that public policies—including minimum wages, paid leave, and health insurance—can “create better jobs in the lowest levels of the health care sectors.”

And she said there need to be pathways for greater mobility for workers, so they can rise to better-paying job categories.

“A nursing assistant is poverty wages and an RN is middle class in the U.S.,” she said. “Helping people make that transition through the health care sector is one powerful way we can promote social justice.”

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As one of the over 550,000 caregivers in the state’s In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) programs, I am part of a big system that keeps 650,000 disabled, blind, or elderly Californians in their own homes, and out of nursing or board-and-care facilities.

But when I go to work around my hometown of Fresno in the houses, trailers, and apartments of these Californians, I often feel alone.

Sometimes, I think this is the worst job I’ve ever had.

That’s saying something because I’ve been working since age 13, almost always taking care of others. Most of my experience involves working in and directing child care facilities and after-school programs. I’ve also worked in group homes for foster kids and in teen suicide prevention programs.

Back in 2006, I was working 80 hours a week in two jobs, and taking home about $60,000 a year. But then the Great Recession came, ending both jobs. I was on unemployment for a while.

Then, my mother got Alzheimer’s.

That was my introduction to IHSS. Many of the caregivers who work through the program are taking care of relatives. My mother applied to receive care from IHSS, and I became one of them.

Here is how the program is supposed to work. A person having difficulty living independently submits an application, then receives a visit from a social worker, who determines what services they need (among them: bathing, bowel and bladder care, grooming, dressing, housework, meal prep, and trips to the grocery store). The social worker also determines how many hours of service they are entitled to receive—the max is 283 hours a month (a little more than 40 hours per week). Once a person is approved to receive caregiving, that person becomes the client, and thus the boss of the caregiver.

And that relationship is often difficult and complicated.

For starters, caregiving for IHSS is a minimum wage job. When I started back in 2011, I received just $8 per hour. That went up to $9 per hour in 2014 and $10 in 2016; today we caregivers earn $15.50 per hour. The social worker gave my mother five-and-a-half hours of caregiving a day.

In reality, I was working 24/7.

It was heart-breaking work. By the time I started getting paid to take care of her, she didn’t know who I was. As the disease progressed, she grew harder to manage—showers were very difficult. She’d pick up things off the floor and eat them. She’d try to run away. Fortunately, the neighbors would stop her if she got out the door.

After she went into a nursing home, in 2018, I took on new clients, whose friends or family knew me, and requested that I take care of their loved ones.

Each situation is challenging in a different way.

Getting paid for the hours you work is nearly impossible, especially when the person has Alzheimer’s or dementia and can’t fill out the time card herself. I once worked 79 hours over two weeks for one client, but relatives, who had her in a conservatorship, signed the card so that I only got paid for 40 hours. In that case, I was supposed to help with cleaning, but the client had no soap or detergent. I had to pay for supplies myself. She also wasn’t sleeping in a bed because she couldn’t assemble it. I had my husband come over and set it up, so she would sleep better.

I brush people’s teeth and spend hours getting them to take their pills. Another approved duty is taking clients to doctor’s appointments. That can take a lot of time—many of my clients are on the south side of Fresno, but the doctors are usually in the north, which means long, slow bus rides with people who need constant monitoring.

Clients also ask for help with tasks that the IHSS social worker hasn’t approved—and it’s hard to say no. I would be on my feet four hours a day with one client who was constantly having me take her to the mall to go shopping, spending away her savings.

The other tricky dynamic is that not all clients live alone. I worked for one elderly man who had a disabled son, and I ended up helping them both.

In many cases, clients are living with friends and family who insist that I do extra work for them, too. I often am treated like the maid. In one situation, my client was living with a relative who was out in the streets constantly and around people. This was during COVID—we were essential workers, and so we had to keep working despite the risks. But, eventually, I insisted that I would clean only one bathroom—the one used by the client—in their trailer and not the second bathroom used by the client’s relative.

Sometimes, I feel vulnerable. I had one client who was a heroin addict and living with a relative who was also an addict. I had another client who was schizophrenic; on errands, I had to fend off men who would try to get her contact information, with the clear purpose of robbing her or otherwise taking advantage.

If I run into these kinds of trouble, there’s not really anyone I can call for help. My only option is to leave that assignment; that means giving up my paycheck until I find a new client, which can take some time. IHSS has tried to solve this problem by having social workers come back for follow-up visits once a year. But once a year isn’t enough supervision to work.

To try to solve some of the problems, I’ve been working as an organizer with my SEIU local, the union that represents IHSS workers. I sign up members and advocate for caregivers to get more hours, to be paid properly, and to be treated better. We also have a number of caregivers who aren’t getting sick leave. And many caregivers don’t have health insurance; I’m fortunate to be on the insurance of my husband, a retired sheet metal worker.

I’d love to retire, but we need the cash, even though it’s just $700 every two weeks. I also do some online sales to boost the family income, and pay my son’s phone bill.

The best hope for caregivers right now is state legislation to raise the minimum wage for all health workers to $25 per hour. With that pay, we caregivers would have more time with our families, and afford to pay bills on time—plus go to the grocery store more, and to the food bank less.

Of course, $25 per hour can’t solve everything. But it would make this job, one of the toughest and worst-paying you will find, a little bit better.

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Even if you can’t stand the religion or politics of your local churches, you might find their congregations to be valuable saviors—of your historic and endangered movie theaters.

In other words, please think twice before engaging in a holy war like the one in Fresno over the historic Tower Theater.

The Tower, first opened in 1939, is an arrow-shaped, Streamline Moderne gem anchoring a neighborhood of retail, restaurants, and arts known as the Tower District. But, like so many of California’s signature theaters, it has struggled, especially in the pandemic. So, the theater’s owner is trying to sell. The owner’s preferred buyer is an evangelical church that has opposed same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ministers.

As a practical matter, church takeovers of old theaters make sense. Movies and live shows are often not enough to support the expensive upkeep of these dilapidated palaces. Churches with growing congregations can regularly fill the seats while raising money for maintenance and improvements—and keeping the space available to the community for events and screenings.

But these are polarized, not practical, times. And many growing churches are non-traditional, evangelical, or politically conservative, and thus don’t fit the more secular and progressive entertainment districts where you find old theaters.

In some places, churches and their neighbors look past their differences and focus on their shared interest in the old buildings. Responsible churches agree to preserve and maintain theaters they take over, in exchange for neighborhoods accommodating the traffic or parking headaches of hosting a congregation. Fresno has seen something like that happen when churches took over other theaters.

But at the Tower Theater, conflicts between the church, the theater owner, and the community have escalated, turning a neighborhood problem into statewide controversy.

To summarize: during the pandemic, the Tower Theater owner allowed Adventure Church, a largely Latino congregation located elsewhere in the Tower District, to hold services there (a questionable decision given COVID-19’s perils). Adventure liked it so much that, when Tower’s owner put the property up for sale late last year, the church agreed to purchase it—and keep it open for shows and non-profit events.

But when word of the purchase agreement leaked, many people in the Tower District understandably saw the transfer of the iconic theater to the church not just as a threat to the theater but as an attack on the spirit of the artsy, inclusive neighborhood. A petition opposing the sale circulated widely, and weekly Sunday protests grew. Local businesses also questioned whether zoning permitted having a church there, and thus whether Adventure’s presence might create zoning or licensing problems for bars and cannabis businesses.

The anti-church protests soon drew counter-protestors from right-wing groups, and police erected barriers to keep them separate. Either the church or the theater owner—it’s not clear whom—raised the political temperature by displaying a tribute to the late right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh, infamous for his homophobic rhetoric, on the theater marquee. California media, obsessed with culture wars, fueled the controversy with their coverage.

The conflict grew from there. The Tower property includes restaurants; one of them sued to block the sale, saying its own agreement entitled it to purchase the property. Fresno’s mayor, seeking to defuse the situation, offered the church an alternative property, which Adventure turned down. Other city officials floated the idea of taking the theater by eminent domain. There is also considerable talk of other people or institutions who might want to buy the place.

If the neighborhood can find a savior for the theater less problematic than Adventure, that would be wonderful. But there are reasons to doubt whether a relatively poor city government like Fresno’s, or a restaurant, can successfully operate an old and costly theater. If that’s the case, then Adventure or another church might end up being the best option, and it could be smart for the community to hold its nose and negotiate.

Yes, I can hear the howls at the idea of any compromising with an anti-gay church. But a keep-your-enemies-close approach makes more sense. Adventure is already in the Tower District, whether it occupies the theater or not. And if you’re going to have to put up with such a church, why not try to benefit from its presence, by getting it to fix up and preserve the Tower? And if you want the church to stop spreading hate, what better way than to engage with the church, with the goal of changing the hearts and minds of the congregation?

I’ve witnessed this more conciliatory approach bear fruit in two California places. One is Redding, where the huge Bethel Church, and its School of Supernatural Ministry, have long been controversial. Bethel has supported gay conversion therapy and attempts to perform miracles such as using prayer to resurrect a dead toddler. Yet when Redding’s civic auditorium was in trouble, Bethel Church and its members, even in the face of considerable criticism and fear of the church in the community, helped form a non-profit, Advance Redding, to save and manage the auditorium. The deal has been a civic success, with the auditorium hosting a variety of shows and the ministry school making rent payments to support the facility.

The other theater is literally around the corner from my San Gabriel Valley home. The historic Rialto, which famously played itself in movies (as the murder scene in Robert Altman’s The Player, and as the date spot where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone watch old movies in La La Land) sat vacant and decaying for nearly a decade until Mosaic Church, a growing mega-church with congregations from Hollywood to Mexico City, moved in.

There was some community resistance to the church’s arrival, and concern for what the theater might become. Mosaic is not my cup of tea—I attended services, and while I liked the diverse and young congregation, your cynical columnist cringed at the pop-style music and the over-the-top positivity of the message.

But, three years later, Mosaic is undeniably a neighborhood asset. The church has carefully helped repair the theater, and taken care to keep the place open and welcoming to the community.

Before the pandemic, Mosaic was even screening movies on the Rialto’s giant screen. One of the last films we saw before COVID-19 hit was a Mosaic-sponsored showing of Miracle on 34th Street, the classic Christmas film about having faith in people whose beliefs we do not share.

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“I try to make it culturally relevant,” León said while answering a question from an audience member at a Zócalo/The California Wellness Foundation event, entitled “How Can We Make Farm Work Healthier?”

“I don’t talk about singing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice,” added León, in reference to the amount of time you should wash your hands for. “I talk about singing the first verse of ‘De Colores.’ When we communicate with our folks, we want to do it in a language they understand.”

León was not speaking metaphorically. For many Huron families, Spanish is their second language. The people in his town speak, in total, some 12 languages, eight of which are Mesoamerican native languages. “I wish there was a better way to engage with all these farmers and rancheros and contractors,” said León. “I see the campesinos, the farmworkers, walking without masks. I think it would be good if they have masks.”

A panel on making farm work healthier in America is relevant at any time. The panel that León joined had, in fact, previously been scheduled to take place on an April evening in Fresno before the pandemic broke out, forcing the discussion to move online instead.

COVID-19 makes the discussion even more urgent. All four panelists said the current crisis adds a new health threat for farmworkers, while deepening existing health risks that range from unstable housing to economic insecurity to a propensity for diabetes and respiratory diseases. At the same time, the attention that the pandemic is bringing to the food supply chain may provide an opportunity to better address farmworkers’ needs.

“Farmworkers and small farmers are considered essential right now. But most people don’t really know what they do or even the risks they take to bring food to our tables,” said KVPR news director and event moderator Alice Daniel, as she started the discussion, which streamed live last night on Zócalo’s YouTube channel. “What’s at stake for everyone?”

Organic farmer and artist Nikiko Masumoto brought a historical perspective. As a fourth-generation farmer, she noted that the U.S. food system depends on immigrant laborers who lack political power and equal rights.

Take the federal stimulus package to help Americans whose lives have been disrupted by the COVID crisis, Masumoto said. “It’s not a secret, a large percentage of our farmworker base are undocumented immigrants who, because of the way the law was structured, are now not going to get the $1,200 stimulus check that every other American is getting,” she said. “That’s an example of how we make laws that continue to marginalize farmworkers.”

Masumoto recalled the ways that American xenophobia has long been tied up with land and agriculture, but she also expressed hope that the current moment might produce a better world for people who work in the fields. “We can’t live without food and thus, if we don’t address the people who produce our food, we can’t move forward,” she said.

Another panelist, medical sociologist Tania Pacheco-Werner, who is co-assistant director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute, called attention to how government policies can keep farmworkers safe right now. In the focus groups Pacheco-Werner conducts, farmworkers “say over and over again, let’s follow the laws that are already in the books,” she said. Specifically, farmworkers complain of farmers and contractors violating existing safety laws, and that the state occupational safety and health agency is too “bare bones” to implement and enforce laws.

At the same time, Pacheco-Werner said, too many laws on economic relief, health, and labor exempt farmworkers from their protections. “Often, they are seen as their own category,” she said. “And when we look at them as a different category, what they really become is secondary citizens within our labor force. That further perpetuates the health disparities they’re already going to go through because of their income, because of their immigration status, because of their language capabilities.”

Going forward, farmworkers need to be integrated into labor, health, and other policies. “We really need to see how they are essential to our food chain,” she said. “Food is tied to security. They’re tied to our national security, and they should be seen in that manner.”

Another panelist, health researcher Chia Thao, shared her own story of growing up in a farming family. Now as a health expert whose work focuses on pesticide use and the well-being of small-scale farmers in the Central Valley, she says she’s seen first-hand how there are large data gaps when it comes to farmworkers and their needs.

“I found that there’s a lack of voice in the community because there’s no research looking into the community,” said Thao, who is currently a doctoral candidate in public health at the University of California, Merced. “So we don’t know their needs. We don’t know some of the challenges and struggles that they have.” When farmworkers’ needs are met, the change can be powerful; for instance, Pacheco-Werner pointed out how, under the Affordable Care Act, there are now more community clinics in less populated places, including down the street from where she lives in the Fresno County city of Sanger.

During the discussion and in a question-and-answer session with a robust online audience, panelists offered specific ideas for improving the health and lives of farmworkers.

León championed the concept of a 401F (“F for farmworker”) retirement plan that would supplement other income (including Social Security, and be part of a suite of supports that include health insurance, sick leave, and citizenship for those who want it). If farmworkers could comfortably retire, instead of working into their 70s, they’d have time to serve as community resources to local farmers’ markets or community gardens, the mayor suggested. “We need our elders to come back home,” he said.

Pacheco-Werner also emphasized the importance of building more supportive structures for farmworkers, especially for those who are undocumented. Making them eligible for public relief and for protections from evictions or foreclosure would not only allow farmworkers to shelter in place in the current crisis, but would also help stabilize the neighborhoods where they live when this is over. “We have to think about farmworkers as part of communities,” she said.

Masumoto echoed that point. “When we ask questions about the well-being of farmworkers,” she said, “We see a mirror of ourselves as a collective and our failings to address all of these intersecting issues—health and well-being, transportation, access via language, the ability to have some of the most fundamental parts of life: shelter, security, that your voice matters.”

The post Will COVID-19 Finally Convince Us to Do Better by Farmworkers? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It’s not just that fast-growing Fresno is emerging as the Golden State’s next great city. Fresno is also undergoing dramatic—and overdue—changes that are opening up its small-town political culture. At the heart of this transformation story is the so-called “Brown Wave,” the emergence of local elected officials, who, like half of Fresno’s residents, are Latino.

Today Fresno, the state’s geographic center, finds itself at its political center. In fact, the most important race in California’s March 3 elections probably won’t end up being the Democratic presidential primary (since the rules all but guarantee a split verdict among the leading contenders). Instead, the contest to be Fresno’s next mayor—a referendum of sorts on the progress of the “Brown Wave”—could be more crucial for what it portends for shifts in political power not just in Fresno, but in communities across the state.

This political wave represents an important—and, for some in Fresno, unsettling—reversal for a city that has long seen itself as more agricultural than urban. In Fresno, as in other agriculturally oriented places in California, rising Latino economic and political power promises a new narrative and a different future for places where white people traditionally held power while brown people did the hardest work.

The media adopted the inelegant term “Brown Wave” to describe the results of Fresno’s 2018 municipal elections, which unexpectedly produced a four-member Latino majority on the seven-member city council. Those four politicians—incumbents Esmeralda Soria and Luis Chavez, alongside council newcomers Miguel Arias, a former community college trustee, and Nelson Esparza, previously a county education board member—grew up in poor or working-class families in Fresno or other San Joaquin Valley communities.

Latino political power is not new to Fresno; the city council had a Latino majority during part of the 1990s. But the council was clubbier and council members were less powerful then. Instead, the crucial movers and shakers in 21st-century Fresno were two former mayors, Alan Autry and Ashley Swearengin, charismatic and pragmatic Republicans.

So the four “Brown Wave” city council members represent a significant departure, and not merely because of ethnicity. They are relatively young, well-educated professionals with more progressive and technocratic instincts than their predecessors. On my two recent visits to council meetings, the seven council members genially dealt with each other and housing issues. Arias, the council president, carried on a light-hearted running commentary from the dais. But when it came time to take a vote on a housing-related project, members of the “Brown Wave” stopped the proceedings—to ask for more data.

Each council member emphasizes different areas and issues, but as a group, the “Brown Wave” politicians share an outlook on how the city should organize its priorities. In particular, they had a more urban perspective on Fresno and argued that the city had too long neglected its older, struggling neighborhoods, which often lack parks, road maintenance, and other necessities of 21st-century California life. The majority was particularly critical of how services and economic development benefits went to established neighborhoods and companies.

Online and on talk radio, the council members have faced derision or nicknames grounded in bigotry (“The Cartel” or “The Squad”) about their ethnicity. (A meeting between two council members and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez inspired bitter complaints.) But the council majority has ignored such insults and pursued a pragmatic and ambitious agenda.

The Fresno City Council, including Miguel Arias (third from left), Luis Chavez (second from right), and Nelson Esparza (far right), and other top officials, pictured in the council chambers. Courtesy of the City of Fresno.

They already claim some successes. The council has put more money into parks, sidewalks, and tree trimming, and sought changes in road funding to put more dollars into neighborhoods with older streets. (You can already see some results on once-potholed streets near Chinatown.) The council voted to relocate a rendering plant away from southwest Fresno neighborhoods, capped alcohol licenses to stop the saturation of liquor stores in lower-income neighborhoods, and imposed new regulations on motels, both to improve short-term housing and combat human trafficking.

In a move that’s relatively rare among local governments, they’ve made housing a priority, establishing a new housing trust fund. On homelessness, the new council has shifted away from the city’s traditional approach of pushing people out via anti-encampment laws by offering more services (through an agreement with the county) and establishing a better process for transitioning people to permanent housing.

The council’s shift on economic development has been even more profound. They approved an airport expansion, with an international terminal, and have embraced so-called project labor agreements, which were once banned in Fresno but are favored by unions to make sure that the benefits of big construction projects flow to workers. The “Brown Wave” politicians, who have been deeply critical of the incentives given to build an Amazon distribution center, have pushed the principle that any benefit or exemption given to a large company should also be available to local small businesses.

But they’ve also been frustrated on big issues—particularly environmental cleanup, regulation of industry to mitigate pollution, and the control and oversight of Fresno’s police department.

This makes this year’s mayoral election a consequential one. With incumbent Lee Brand leaving office, the powerful former police chief Jerry Dyer is running as the establishment candidate, and as a brake on the “Brown Wave” council members, with whom he has tangled. He has dominated the public conversation about the race in part because of a controversial past that includes a mysterious death in front of his home and a police department second-in-command who turned out to be a drug kingpin.

Most council members are aligned with the other candidate, prosecutor Andrew Janz, best known for coming close to knocking off Congressman Devin Nunes in 2018. Already, the election has been hotly contested, and it could go on for many more months. If neither Janz nor Dyer wins a majority on March 3, there will be a run-off election in November, raising the prospect of a nasty campaign that consumes the year.

This is not the only race in which the power of the “Brown Wave” will be tested. Councilmember Soria has launched a progressive challenge against her fellow Democrat, Congressman Jim Costa, a moderate fixture of Fresno politics.

Whatever the results of these contests, it seems likely that this wave has changed Fresno forever. Governance and politics, long a place for back-slapping and informal deals, are modernizing as Fresno—and much of California—grow up.

The post Why Fresno Is on the Leading Edge of a ‘Wave’ of Political Change appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In our search for inspiring new ideas for solving California’s housing crisis, we must dig deeper. We must take our cues from Archimedes, “Give me a place on which to stand, and I will move the earth.”

How deep must we dig? At least to the depths plumbed by Baldassare Forestiere.

If you’ve never heard of Forestiere, you’re not alone. He’s never become the household name he should be in California. He deserves far more recognition for being the creator of Fresno’s greatest structure, which is also one of our state’s most enduring artistic achievements.

California’s collective ignorance about Forestiere and the underground wonderland he built is understandable, since his seven-acre subterranean development of gardens, tunnels, and rooms is hidden under a lot on Shaw Avenue, between Highway 99 and a Carl’s Jr.

Forestiere died in 1946, after he’d been digging for 40 years, but we must revive him now, not because of his skill with a pickax but because of his spirit. Our state is not responding to its housing shortage with invention and pluck, but with rules, regulations, and mandates.

Forestiere’s story points us to another path. We must free Californians to create housing in new and unexpected ways, so that we all might do what he once did: turn a terrible situation into something new and beautiful.

Baldassare Forestiere was born in 1879, in a hamlet in Sicily. As a young man, he fled his country and domineering father, a fruit grower, for the U.S. Arriving on the East Coast, he learned about underground construction while toiling on the Croton Aqueduct and the Holland Tunnel. In 1904, eager to farm his own land, he purchased a 70-acre plot in Fresno, with the goal of growing citrus on it.

Then he dug into the ground and—disaster—he struck hardpan, the rock-like soil that is impermeable to water and impossible to cultivate.

He might have surrendered, but he didn’t. Instead, he began carving a home for himself out of that rocky soil structure, using the displaced rocks as building material to reinforce arched doorways and other architectural details.

He also discovered, when he dug underneath the hardpan, rich soil in which he could plant citrus trees, grapevines, and other plants—more than 10 feet below the surface. Planted underground, these plants grew more slowly, but also better—so much so that today many of his original trees are still producing fruit.

It took him eight years to complete his residence—a sitting room, courts, a library chapel, a fish pond, and different bedrooms for winter and summer weather. But he couldn’t stop digging; eventually, over 40 years he hand-built more than 65 rooms and grottos, spread across three distinct levels, extending 25 feet underground. He may have wanted to turn the place into a resort, but he never did. (He made money digging irrigation ditches and building other things for neighboring farmers).

Forestiere’s house reflects an untutored genius. He did not write down designs, plans or drawings, or seek a building permit. (In fact, he did not read or write English). Instead, he followed his instincts, and they were good. Even though it’s underground, the place feels open and airy. There is a Sunrise Patio and a Sunset Patio, a banquet hall, a chapel courtyard, and, like the White House, a West Wing. He even carved out an auto tunnel that allowed him to drive into his own house.

Forestiere was ahead of his time in designing a sustainable home. He created skylights and tunnels to bring both breezes and sunlight into the space. He positioned his underground planters to catch rainwater, and he built a drainage system with a cistern to minimize flooding. He grew his own food—not just fruit, but also herbs. He had a pool (with a bridge) and an aquarium stocked with fish taken from the San Joaquin River. He even achieved a cool escape from the brutal Fresno summers. On my recent midday visit, the temperature was 99 degrees in Fresno, but it was just 80 underground.

What drove him? Some accounts say he was preparing for a bride from Italy, who never arrived. Others suggest a profound divine inspiration—Forestiere was a Catholic, and his underground home and gardens are full of spaces for prayer and religious devotion.

In 1923, he told an inquiring Fresno Bee reporter, “The visions in my mind almost overwhelm me.” In his terrific pictorial history of the underground gardens, Silvio Manno, another Italian immigrant to Fresno, quotes Forestiere as saying: “To make something with a lot of money, that is easy, but to make something out of nothing—now that is really something.”

Forestiere’s underground building merits more attention, and not just because underground homes, despite their costs and maintenance challenges, make more sense in an era of climate change (since living underground offers protection from extreme temperatures) and calamity (since earth-sheltered homes are cheaper to insure against winds, storms, and fire).

Forestiere’s place reminds us that ingenuity, in housing as well as in other things, rarely comes in expected places, or by following the rules.

Behind our housing shortage is a deficit of spirit. We have stopped following our housing whims and dreams. We live at a time where anyone can stop anything, when a project that is out of the ordinary is easily blocked by any number of legal tools. So is it any wonder that we don’t build much of anything at all?

Indeed, just repairing structures triggers so much scrutiny that our housing stock is some of the most rundown in the entire country. And even the tiniest housing opportunities for creativity are quickly closed. As soon as the state opened the door to the construction of “granny flats,” municipalities quickly imposed restrictions to discourage their construction.

Such intransigence and inaction in the face of crisis is really an invitation. Rather than lamenting what we don’t have, rather than limiting our imaginations, rather than building small amounts of the same eco-unfriendly housing, we need to start digging—literally and metaphorically.

And if you need any inspiration or ideas, pack up your car or board a bus to Fresno. The answers are lying there, deep in the rocks and dirt.

The post The Lessons of Fresno’s Ingenious Underground Gardens appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.