Casa Latina has found success — and a better way for members to find work

EDITOR’S NOTE: Seattle photographer Michael Barkin has been documenting Casa Latina — and the workers it serves — since 2001. These photos are part of that 23-year project.

IN THE CHILLY predawn hours of a recent Thursday morning, 37 men and women have made their way through Seattle, converging at the Casa Latina day-labor center, hoping for work.

One of the first to arrive is Jimmy Ventura, an ebullient man in his early 50s. Originally from Mexico, he’s been coming to the worker center since the 1990s — before its move from Belltown to the Central District. Today, he’s volunteered for door duty, greeting the workers as each knocks on the locked glass door, shows a Casa Latina membership card and hustles in, out of the dark.

Inside, the big room is simple but cozy: folding chairs, coffee, a fridge with snacks ($2 tamales, $1.50 soups, $2 Gatorade) and soft chatting.

Door duty puts Ventura’s name toward the top of the list for work — other volunteers, who agree to clean the common room or parking lot, also get top-of-list privileges. Everybody else (the men in heavy boots, the women in sneakers looking for domestic work) has to wait for the lottery.

At the front of the room, an easygoing, bearded man named Fred DuBon — who used to show up at Casa Latina for day labor, and now manages its worker center — scans the members’ cards before they go into the big lottery jug: the kind of five-gallon plastic cylinder you’d see on top of a water cooler, except with its top cut off.

Soon, that jug will become the center of attention.

It looks venerable, covered in tape and football team stickers (the New Orleans Saints, the Pittsburgh Steelers, of course the Seahawks) with a message scrawled in black marker: “Muevelo bien, por favor. Suerte a todos.”

Good luck to all.

Two of the day workers — Domingo Aguilar, in snakeskin-style boots, and Fidel Montalván, whose brown boat shoes attract affectionate teasing — step up, reach into the jug and pull members’ cards.

The names go on a whiteboard, and up on a digital screen. Then the jobs, requested by employers ahead of time (over the phone or online): pressure washing, housecleaning, yard work. As the indigo sky outside begins to lighten, the day’s tally is settled: 37 workers arrived; 11 got jobs.

That’s the way the lottery goes, Ventura says. “If you don’t play, you can’t win!”

IN 2001, WHEN local photographer Michael Barkin was fresh out of the University of Washington and recently back from three months in Mexico, he began to hang out with and photograph day laborers congregating in Belltown, looking for work.

Some would stand in groups along Western Avenue, waiting for a prospective employer to drive up, then compete to be picked for whatever job was being offered. But nearby, at Western Avenue and Battery Street, a small nonprofit called Casa Latina was operating a different, less chaotic system — a community lottery.

That nonprofit turns 30 this year. It has grown from an all-volunteer, no-money effort to an organization with 19 staff members and more than $2 million in annual revenue, but has retained its basic bones: English classes, workshops, advocacy, community and a way of finding work that is safer and more transparent than the anonymous scrum of the street or hardware-store parking lots.

DUBON IS A good example.

He first came to the United States in 2006, crossing the border in Texas when he was 17 years old. He’d fled his very small town in the mountains of El Salvador when that country’s flourishing gang activity reached his community’s doorstep.

“Some of my friends went into that life, and some ran away from it,” DuBon says. “I ran.” (In 2006, El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere, according to data from the World Bank.)

After a few years in San Antonio, he traveled to Seattle, where he spent a period of homelessness living underneath Interstate 5 in the Chinatown International District, jockeying for work in Home Depot parking lots. One day, Casa Latina organizers showed up, handing out flyers, including some about wage theft.

DuBon had been stiffed on a painting job a few weeks earlier — an employer simply refused to pay — and started going to Casa Latina instead of Home Depot. He took English classes and found day work, both of which helped him build his own client list. He saved up enough to rent a room in a shared house, then got a staff job at Casa Latina. He got married, became a U.S. citizen, and now has his own place and two kids.

That Thursday morning at Casa Latina is typical for winter — but in the summertime, jobs and workers balloon to more than 100, with people spilling into the parking lot.

The program, DuBon says, benefits everyone involved. The members collectively set their wages and keep 100% of what they’re paid (a benefit to workers). Casa Latina vets the workers’ skills — if you say you’re a painter, for example, you have to prove it by painting part of the building (a benefit to employers). Employers and workers are both known to Casa Latina, providing some accountability (a benefit to all).

“Casa Latina is a nonprofit, but the members don’t come for charity — they come for work,” DuBon says. “You’ll get your garden cleaned, but you’ll also help out this guy who is helping his family. And the more families we can help, the better.”

SINCE ITS FOUNDING in 1994, Casa Latina has moved, expanded and been through changes.

One of its more painful episodes is very recent: In 2021, internal allegations of sexual harassment led to protests and a lawsuit, settled for $1 million in 2023. The events also resulted in staff and leadership turnover, including the ouster of implicated staff members and the appointment of co-executive directors Vania Adasme and Jessica Salvador.

Community leaders outside Casa Latina say the organization is on a promising path to recovery and renewed trust. “My heart goes out to the victims, and I’m glad they stood up,” says Burien city council member Jimmy Matta, a former labor organizer and son of undocumented farmworkers. “And I have a lot of respect for Casa Latina. I think they’re past the bumpiest part.”

Today, Casa Latina has around 600 members: roughly half day laborers and half domestic workers. (Prospective members have to attend a training workshop and provide some form of official ID.) The nonprofit’s origins in education, jobs and advocacy remain its pillars, says Silvia González — who, like DuBon, first came to Casa Latina looking for work, and is now on staff as its lead for community organizing, as well as manager of its women’s leadership program, Mujeres Sin Fronteras (Women Without Borders).

Originally from Michoacán, Mexico, González arrived at Casa Latina in 2011 in a state of distress. The local fast-food restaurant where she’d worked for six years had closed — just as her daughter was starting college. “I couldn’t say to her, ‘I don’t have money; you have to come back,’ ” González recalls. “It was a very, very hard time.”

She began to find housecleaning work through Casa Latina — “I remember sitting with Freddie (DuBon) in those chairs, waiting for jobs” — which then hired her to do worker-safety outreach in those hardware-store parking lots, encouraging laborers to use goggles and gloves.

Since then, González helped get the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights passed in Seattle (which enshrines a minimum wage, breaks and other basic protections) and serves on the Seattle Domestic Workers Standards Board and the Washington State Labor Council.

But González seems most enthusiastic about Mujeres Sin Fronteras, which offers workshops requested by members (on mental health, domestic violence, even cooking classes) and a space to share their struggles, hopes and achievements. “When I talk about Mujeres Sin Fronteras and how the women grow,” she says, then pauses, “I get emotional.”

Of the 19 staff members at Casa Latina, González says, seven were members in the day-labor and domestic work program.

“When we come from the base, we know the struggles,” she says. “We know how it’s scary not to have money in your pocket, and we know the feeling of being alone — we understand and connect.”

While job placement and English classes are essential services, she argues, Casa Latina is something more — it lives in the intangibles, like conversations at Mujeres Sin Fronteras, or workers checking in with each other over coffee before the predawn lottery.

“Casa Latina is a community,” she says. “We’re 30 years old. That’s a lot of years. And we are strong.”