COLCHESTER, Vt. (WCAX) – Even at night, the lights stay on at 128 Hegeman Avenue in Colchester, where there are signs for Vermont Construction Company outside. But reporting done first by VTDigger reveals it’s more than a commercial property.
“The fact that they’re keeping these people like indentured slaves, servants, in their buildings,” said Colchester Selectboard Chair Pam Loranger.
Loranger admonished Vermont Construction Company at a meeting Tuesday night after discovering the company was housing up to 19 people in a storage space with exposed electrical wiring and loose trash near space heaters without any fire or carbon monoxide safety measures.
“It’s not like they were living in squalor. This is good accommodations for some of them,” said Byron GOokey from Vermont Construction Company.
Gokey has been building in Vermont for over 50 years. He’s proud of Vermont Construction Company’s work and he says the business is growing quickly with rising demand for work and laborers, many of whom happen to be Latino migrants.
“A lot of them we didn’t even know were here,” said Gokey.
Gokey says six people were temporarily allowed to live in the storage facility after their housing fell through because of safety violations in September.
There is no place to put them. You can’t even get into hotels in this town. We were doing the best we could, and I guess we weren’t policing them as good as some people would have liked us to” said Gokey.
Gokey also says since the inspectors visited the property on December 5th, those living there have vacated. Employer-provided housing is a trend to attract migrant workers in the dairy industry, and Will Lambek with Migrant Justice says other industries like hospitality and construction are taking a page out of their book.
“The great irony here, is that the people who are coming to the state to build housing, to address the housing shortage in the state, are the ones who themselves are having difficulty finding quality and dignified housing,” said Lambek.
Migrant Justice believes new state legislation to protect migrants against housing discrimination could bolster the labor force and ensure safe housing.