A dilapidated greenhouse at a Northern California nursery was home to dozens of farmworkers and their families, who were living in tiny and unsafe dwellings without ventilation, authorities said on Friday.
Officials found 62 makeshift dwellings inside the greenhouse on a property in rural Monterey County.
They were put together with plywood, sheetrock and other materials, Monterey County Government spokesperson Nick Pasculli said.
Photo: AFP
“There are exposed gas lines and wiring, no proper sewer. The conditions are very rough,” Pasculli said.
It was not yet clear if the farmworkers were employed at the nursery in the community of Royal Oaks or just lived there, Pasculli said.
He added that some residents were paying up to US$2,000 per month in rent and one told investigators he had lived there for more than eight months.
Investigators have not yet determined where the migrant families are from, although some of them speak indigenous languages native to the Mexican state of Oaxaca, he said.
Authorities started investigating the property this week after receiving an anonymous complaint.
The nursery owner would be fined nearly US$60,000 each day his property is in contravention of structural, health and environmental codes, Pasculli said.
The landlord’s name was not released due to an ongoing investigation, he said.
County officials were working with the families to find suitable housing and their landlord would have to pay for two months of rent for each of the 62 families that were living on his property, Pasculli said.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS