San Mateo County officials resolve to help farmworkers

Zhishen Liu, 73, Aixiang Zhang, 74, Qizhong Cheng, 66, Jingzhi Lu, 64, Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50, Yetao Bing, 43, and Jose Romero Perez, 38. These are the names of the seven Half Moon Bay residents and farmworkers killed by a co-worker in the largest mass shooting in San Mateo County history.

Their names were repeated multiple times during the meeting including by Virginia Chang Kiraly, National Alliance on Mental Illness San Mateo County board president, a daughter of Chinese immigrants and a gun violence survivor as well.

Chang Kiraly was asked to speak the victims names by Mueller to ensure they were said with the proper Chinese pronunciations. Speaking later on in the meeting, Chang Kiraly became emotional when speaking of the trauma the families have faced, the need for more culturally comprehensive care in Chinese languages and dialects, and the importance of breaking down barriers of accessing mental health care in Asian communities.

“The horrific incident in Half Moon Bay has been a wakeup call for our community, shining a bright light on the lack of resources available to farmworkers, especially the surviving Chinese farmworkers,” said Chang Kiraly who has been working as a Mandarin translator and mental health advocate for victims and their families since the incident. “When speaking with the survivors, I consistently heard they are afraid to go back to subsisted living and working conditions. I am afraid that without the necessary cultural understanding Chinese people should have, we will regress to the dark days of the Chinese Exclusion Act without realizing it.”

Housing now, and in the future

The victims lived on the farms where they worked, California Terra Garden and Concord Farms, with their families. Since the incident, those residing on the farms — 37 people, including 11 children, making up 18 families — have been housed in hotel rooms.

During that time, they’ve been provided with meals and snacks daily, paid between $1,000 and $2,000 for lost wages and afforded other necessities and support including counseling services, County Executive Officer Mike Callagy said during Tuesday’s supervisor meeting.

In the short term, Callagy said the county will continue housing the families in hotels. He told supervisors he will likely return to the board’s next meeting with a request for $1 million to continue providing that support.

Meanwhile, he said officials are in search of housing that will allow the families to become self-sufficient again, noting many have expressed an interest in being able to cook for themselves and to return to a somewhat normal life.

That transition back to normalcy will not likely include returning to the units they once called home. Tours of the sites left county officials concerned for the living conditions of farmworkers on the coast, particularly those in “shadow housing” or unpermitted units like the ones at the two farms targeted by the shooting.

“We can no longer allow that to occur in this county and we’ve got to work together to find longer term solutions, permanent solutions,” Callagy said.

Finding the 18 families housing in the medium term will be a challenge, Callagy acknowledged. California Terra Garden officials announced Monday they plan on building permanent units on-site but that effort will take about a year.

And county officials expressed an interest in duplicating an effort led by U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, to establish farmworker housing on the coast, however, that too will take time. In the meantime, Callagy said officials will be looking to Half Moon Bay neighbors to open their doors.

There are 18 farms with at least five workers living on them in the county, however, Callagy said there are likely more and officials will identify those locations, called shadow sites. Mueller suggested the county survey farmworker housing on the coast to determine what areas can be improved to a livable state now. He also lauded county staff and partner agencies for their response to the shooting but said he’d like to see an after-action report completed to gauge where the county can improve.

Seeking resources

Mueller also acknowledged that the county was unaware of how many Asian farmworkers were residing in the county and he and Supervisor Noelia Corzo, who said her life has also been affected by gun violence, echoed sentiments shared by Chang Kiraly about the need for additional culturally comprehensive resources.

“Preventable gun violence and the impacts of it will resonate with this community for decades, if not, for life times,” Corzo said. “I see you. You are not invisible. Your community has needs and I will do what I can to help create awareness and find solutions.”

Corzo and Supervisor David Canepa both argued the issues San Mateo County faces — the need for more mental health resources, gun violence, a housing shortage to name a few — stretch far beyond the county’s borders and will require broad support.

That support, Canepa said, will need to come from state and federal agencies. Both bodies of government played major roles during the COVID-19 pandemic in providing the most vulnerable populations with housing and financial aid, Canepa said, and can now help scale programs to address housing and mental health, he argued.

“We owe it to the victims of this tragedy to improve the conditions under which they lived and the betterment of our farmworkers,” Canepa said. “My plea to the federal government, to our Congress, my plea to our Legislature is to really, really help us with the resources we need for housing and mental health. Without those resources, counties like San Mateo County are not going to be able to address this.”