Santa Paula: The Citrus Capital Of The World
I have grown up and lived in Santa Paula my entire life, at least up until this year. I like to think that I live in Santa Paula “part-time”, because although it is my hometown, I now spend most of my days in Northridge since I am now a student at CSUN. However, during the holidays or whenever I’m free on the weekends, I try my best to visit Santa Paula as much as I can.
Since moving to Northridge, it fascinates me how much the scenery changes with just a 40 minute drive. Between towns, starting from Santa Paula there’s little to no traffic and lots of beautiful hillsides. Yet, when entering Northridge there’s usually traffic and the scenery mainly consists of the long streets which seem to endlessly stretch and stitch together with other nearby cities.
When I was living in Santa Paula “full-time” I was pretty involved with the community. Especially when I was in high school, I was part of CAUSE which is a local non-profit organization that advocates for education, the environment, and human rights. I did a lot of community service through CAUSE in reaching out to residents by calling their phone numbers, going door to door, and leading community meetings. One of our main objectives was to receive feedback from Santa Paula residents on how the city could improve, or to inform them about any policies or changes that could affect the city.
My experience growing up in Santa Paula and the interactions and connections I made with CAUSE made me see that the town is mainly populated with Latino immigrants, or of Latino decent. Especially since Santa Paula is known as the citrus capital of the world, there are a lot of immigrant farmworkers who work in Santa Paula or in the neighboring cities such as Oxnard. With a lot of farmworkers in town, for the most part, many of the residents in Santa Paula have low incomes.
Over the years, I’ve noticed an increase in homelessness. There has also been construction for new housing on top of what used to be the Limonera soccer fields for youth soccer tournaments.
This is concerning because with the new housing being constructed, there are also new shops and possibly a new high school being constructed which I believe will create a divide between the higher earning residents and the low-income population. I believe this divide will happen because more people with higher incomes will start to move in since those with lower incomes may not be able to afford the new housing, or to stay in town if the rent increases as a result of more demand in housing.
Also, for the past few years theres been large fires such as the Thomas Fire in 2017 and this year, The Maria Fire which have affected the air quality. Yet, the people who work in the fields have still been required to go to work despite the conditions from the fires.
Going back to the census, I want to know if this year the statistics will drastically change. For the most part have people in town been participating? How many are unaccounted for, and how many are afraid to participate because of their citizenship status? I also want to find out what can be done for farmworkers rights, so they receive better compensation for the hard work they do.
