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After spending two years as community development director for Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Vanessa Guerra has returned to Mutual Housing California, to once again put her talents to work as a senior project manager. It’s a role that fits her well, which Vanessa, 37, proved when she helped shape the Mutual Housing at Spring Lake farmworker community in Woodland that opened in 2015 and that has won a variety of national and international awards. Her passion for housing goes back to when she was a little girl and lived in what she called a “raggedy” dwelling outside Esparto. Now, she’ll be able to once again direct it into developing a new generation of attractive and affordable housing communities for California’s lowest-income residents.<\/p>\n
She was interviewed for this article by Mutual Housing communications consultant Andy Furillo.<\/p>\n
The construction of the Mutual Housing at Spring Lake community had to be one of your biggest career achievements. What did that project mean to you personally?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – The more meaningful aspect of it for me was that not only was it sustainable and innovative, but that it was housing for farmworkers. Having a farmworker background myself, and understanding the struggles of growing up in that kind of life, it was just really touching to me to be able to remember that chapter in my life and to be able to give back to those families that are going through that struggle.<\/p>\n Then you went off to become the community development manager for Yocha Dehe. What was the attraction there?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – It was an opportunity to be part of another meaningful career path while helping the community where I was raised. Yocha Dehe is the tribe that resides in the community where I grew up, and the community development job offered an opportunity for me to once again be part of an effort that would help those in need. They were a small, poor tribe in Rumsey. None of us in the community growing up in Esparto would have imagined that they’d be so successful with the Cache Creek casino. I’m very proud they were able to do that, and I’m proud to say that I’m from the same community. They are such a unique tribe in that they like to give back. It was so attractive to me that they were so invested in their community and invited me to be a part of it.<\/p>\n What did your job entail as Yocha Dehe’s community development manager?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – I helped them develop a new department that administers a new source of funding that was created in collaboration with the state to invest locally. I essentially helped the tribe manage the allocation of these funds to specific projects and initiatives that support the local and tribal community. It went beyond housing, to education and health care, and any other kinds of social services that needed funding.<\/p>\n How rewarding was it to work in the area where you grew up, first on Spring Lake and then with Yocha Dehe?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – It was really, in a way, nostalgic, and an eye-opener. Before Spring Lake, there wasn’t much change in the sense of housing for farmworkers. It was essentially the same as it was when I left Esparto 20 years ago. And to be able to make some significant change there, and to be able to provide this housing, was really amazing. At Yocha Dehe, and I worked to invest more funds in, for instance, education – the schools there had the same stuff from when I attended. The tribe funneled a few million dollars into the district so it would be able to renovate and provide new facilities and update facilities that were in dire need. To be able to help there and to invest there so that they could make a positive change and help the new generation, that was really rewarding to be part of that.<\/p>\n What are your most enduring memories of growing up in a farmworker family?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – My dad was an irrigation foreman, for a local rancher, and my mom worked seasonally. We lived in this old, raggedy house, on the outskirts of the town, on County Road 23. The house doesn’t exist anymore. I talk to my brothers about it, and the house was really a shack. It was falling apart. We did the best with what we could, to fix it up. It was what we could afford. Rats could come inside. It was terrible. It had no insulation, no central heating or air. We ran off a well and septic system. I have memories of those hot summers. There was no way to cool yourself down. No AC, and in the winters, it was so cold, we had electric blankets and heaters. It was so rough. But those are the memories. As a child, I remember having to wake up early in the morning sometimes because my mom had to go drop me off at the local daycare, and she had to go in at 4:30, so it was really early in the morning, and that was always tough. As I grew older, I would say 12 or 13, I worked in a peach orchard out there, in the triple digit heat. You just have to work through that heat.<\/p>\n \nSo you were a farmworker?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – All of us were. I think I was 5 and my mom used to work harvesting figs, and it was essentially the whole family – my mom, my two older brothers and myself. I would put them in boxes and we’d get paid per box. She’d make me wear these little knee pads, and we’d have to pick the dried figs that fell off the trees in the boxes.<\/p>\n Did that upbringing help motivate you in regard to housing?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – Yes. I remember that chapter of my life, and that’s the one thing that drives me to work to provide decent housing. Something as simple as, I remember wishing I had a bathtub when I was a kid. To be able to provide simple amenities to young children that are probably in that same situation, so they can have that kind of housing, it’s so important.<\/p>\n What brought you back to Mutual Housing?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – My passion has always been in housing, and after gaining some of that experience in community development, working with the tribe, I was able to gain the perspective of being a funder. I have a better feel of what funders are looking for.<\/p>\n What are you going to be working on first?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – Right now, I’m working on another farmworker housing community, in Colusa County. It’s in an early phase right now. The critical piece is securing the financing, the loan from the U.S Department of Agriculture. That’s always the big part, and the rental assistance is always a huge piece as well.<\/p>\n Do you think this is where you’ll be for the rest of your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – I think I’ll stay in housing, but not necessarily in project management. Policy and development both really attract me, policy and planning, something along that nature, where I’m able to make significant change. Actually developing a project or implementing a policy that allows for this kind of development to happen, that’s where I feel I can make more of a difference.<\/p>\n What kind of change do you want to make?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – Keeping up with innovation. Keeping up with the way our world is changing. Addressing critical issues that are being overlooked. We know that housing has been an issue for a long time, and now it’s becoming a crisis. We need to start addressing this, and thankfully we have legislators now who are making this change. Being part of that is crucial.<\/p>\n What does California need to do to make that change happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – The state already has made a huge effort in investing money. That’s key. But a bigger change is pushing local jurisdictions, pushing local governments to enforce policies that they already have that support housing. They already have all these policies, but they have no teeth, so sometimes local governments don’t have an incentive to support affordable housing in their communities.<\/p>\n At what point did you realize housing was such a critical component of improving somebody’s overall life?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – I always had this desire to want to create better housing because I lived in such crummy housing, but I didn’t realize it until I was in essentially in my last year in college, when I came across California Coalition for Rural Housing and its internship program. I thought I was going to be a construction manager for a general contractor, but then I found I was more interested in development. So I started looking for internships in development, and that’s when I came across CCRH and the development of low-income housing for families, and that’s where I found the internship that was perfect for me. I applied for the internship, and was selected, and my host agency happened to be Mutual Housing, and it introduced me to the world of affordable housing.<\/p>\n What is it about affordable housing that presents the most unique challenge or opportunity for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – I think the biggest challenge is just the acceptance of it, the struggle that most of society has in understanding what affordable housing is. Right now, we’re in this era where we all recognize that housing is a crisis. But when it comes down to it, and we say we want to develop housing, and that we’re going to develop it here, we face the challenge of, “Don’t do it in my backyard.”<\/p>\n How do you change that mindset?<\/strong><\/p>\n VG – Just putting it out there. Provide visibility of these fantastic projects that Mutual Housing and all other affordable housing developers are developing: this is what affordable housing looks like. Most folks think about that bad stereotype. We need to bring the reality to them, of what affordable housing really is. I think it starts with your circle of friends. It has to start with the closest people you know, with that word of mouth. We can all see this on social media, or read an article about some great project. But it’s not until you hear about it from the words of your best friend or your great neighbor – people that you trust – that you start really believing it and changing your way of thinking.<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After spending two years as community development director for Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Vanessa Guerra has returned to Mutual Housing California, to once again put her talents to work as a senior project manager. It’s a role that fits her well, which Vanessa, 37, proved when she helped shape the Mutual Housing at Spring Lake… <\/p>\n