By Linda Taaffe

Hundreds of day laborers were lined up back on El Camino Real looking for work last week after St. Joseph the Worker Center shut down Oct. 31. The non-profit center, which trained, counseled and matched day workers with employers over the past five years, was unable to extend its lease at 4898 El Camino Real in Los Altos.

Program Director Steve Pehanich said he attributed higher rent and program costs as well as overcrowding to the center’s closure. Pehanich said the 1,000-square-foot building attracted about 250 workers a day. The landlord had already extended the center’s lease twice earlier this year, he said.

A group of day workers marched from the center to Mountain View City Hall on the eve of the center’s pending closure, asking the city council to help them find a new location and provide program funding. Without the center, workers face losing work or hitting the streets, which is illegal in both Los Altos and Mountain View.

Los Altos passed a no solicitation ordinance in 1999 that prohibits the solicitation for workers in the public right of way in designated zones. Mountain View passed a similar ordinance last year after residents complained about day workers loitering along the street.

The council agreed to find a vacant lot to provide the workers a temporary center but rejected their pleas for financial help until Los Altos and Palo Alto come forward to help. The Council said funding a center is a regional issues since the workers and employers come from surrounding Peninsula cities. Los Altos residents account for about a quarter of the employers who use the center, according to a center volunteer.

Los Altos provided program funding last year through a Community Development Block Grant, but discontinued funding this year after discovering that the center never came forward to collect the money.

Pehanich said the center attempted to collect the money but the grant required so much paperwork that time ran out before the center was able to correctly complete it.

Pehanich said officials from the non-profit St. Vincent De Paul, which operates the program, had begun to raise money for a larger location to accommodate workers earlier this year. A possible relocation site in Mountain View’s industrial area that the center had investigated earlier looked dismal last month, he said.

John Rinaldi, a Mountain View resident and attorney for St. Vincent De Paul, told the Los Altos City Council last month that he intends to challenge the city legally if it enforces its no solicitation ban. Rinaldi said he believed the ordinance raises constitutional issues.

Mountain View and Los Altos police said they will only issue citations to day workers if they create a safety hazard.