Carrboro police seek out adequate site for laborers

Efforts to find an official location for day laborers to seek employment are gaining momentum.

New stakeholders are trying to find a permanent station for day laborers — most of whom are Latino — in Carrboro that would provide basic amenities and separate the honest workers from the everyday loiterers.

When Carrboro’s Board of Aldermen saw an unofficial gathering site at the intersection of Jones Ferry Road and Davie Road get out of hand with drinking, harassment and public urination during the last few years, they addressed the issue in 2007 with an ordinance to ban lingering after 11 a.m.

But that ordinance has failed to completely eliminate problems.

“I would like the day laborers to be elevated in people’s minds to working class people, and that’s tough to do if they’re standing out on the street hoping to be chosen for a job,” said Board of Aldermen member Randee Haven-O’Donnell.

“Especially if they’re standing out there with people who may not be looking for a job.”

Current site causes trouble

Carrboro police identified the day laborers’ unofficial gathering as a problem as early as 2003, and Police Chief Carolyn Hutchison is a key figure in finding alternatives.

Hutchison sees two issues: The honest workers need a safe place to await jobs while neighbors deserve an end to the loitering.

“You’ve got the people that want to work and the people who want to socialize and drink,” she said.

Although the ordinance requires people at the site to clear after 11 a.m. — when most people with the intent to work have been picked up — the site is still a serious public nuisance, Hutchison said.

To avoid the ordinance, people disappear into the woods behind the Kangaroo station or onto the grounds of Abbey Court Condominiums, a majority-Latino housing complex on Jones Ferry Road.

Hutchison said police will often chase loiterers from one location and find them at another.

A new site in the works

Many people express concerns that the workers have no shelter or bathrooms at their waiting spot, that the crosswalk on Jones Ferry Road is dangerous and that the under-the-radar nature of the employment results in wage theft.

Community members, police and town officials are all working to address these concerns.

UNC sociology professor Judith Blau founded a human rights center to provide resources to Abbey Court families. She is leading conversations to find a safer location for workers.

With the support of Elsa Ally Dena, new property manager, Abbey Court has hosted two community meetings where locals have worked to solve issues facing residents and neighbors, including the day laborer site.

“In the best of possible worlds, there would be a day laborers’ center for employers to come and register, because there’s a lot of exploitation and wage theft,” Blau said.

Last week, Blau met with Carrboro’s Community and Economic Development Director James Harris and officials at the UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity to combine resources toward finding a solution.

The poverty center is recruiting UNC law students to compile a report this semester on possible solutions.

If Carrboro provided an official day laborer site, Hutchison said, it could include safety measures like a circular drive for employers and legitimate work contracts.

The site would have to be reachable by foot and bus and near the highway so employers aren’t inconvenienced, Hutchison said.

The current site cropped up in the first place because of its proximity to N.C. 54 and to low-income housing, Hutchison said.

A hard-to-reach goal

Haven-O’Donnell said that she’s been concerned about the day laborer site for years, but that a solution won’t come easily.

She said even though the town is unanimously supportive of new solutions, Carrboro simply doesn’t have enough resources to quickly finalize a new location.

“I wish it was resolved by now,” Haven-O’Donnell said. “We have to be creative.”

Haven-O’Donnell’s hope is that the new site can start off as a shelter like a bus depot, which still wouldn’t solve the problems of wage theft or access to bathrooms and water.

“I would hope that we would be able to create something more permanent, but between now and then you’d have to have something that is more or less tested out.”



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