Restaurant owners touted the housing they provide workers as an “employee benefit,” but a Gazette investigation found such housing isn’t always so beneficial.
Wilfredo Zuniga said with the cockroaches, bed bugs and lack of appliances, life was challenging at the house provided by the now-shuttered Zen restaurant on State Street in Northampton.
He said he learned to double-tie his bag of corn flakes shut, and to dump the roaches out before pulling his kitchen boots on for work.
“You couldn’t sleep, with the bed bugs in the rooms,” said Zuniga.
Erik Hong and Michelle Sun, the Zen owners who also owned the property at 198 State Street, did not respond to requests for comment.
About six weeks after Zen’s May 23 closing, a new group of immigrants answered the door that leads into the upstairs apartment. This time, they are employees at the restaurant that took Zen’s place, Oriental Taste.
The owner of the new restaurant, Cheng Hui Zheng, who had no connection with Zen, also owns Oriental Flavor restaurant in Amherst. Like some other owners of Chinese and Japanese restaurants, he said the practice of providing worker housing helps his business and his staff.
Zheng said that the State Street home was renovated before the current tenants arrived.
A Gazette reporter and photographer, often accompanied by a Chinese translator, used property records to identify and visit Hampshire County homes that are owned by Asian restaurant owners. Some workers interviewed spoke of cramped, unsanitary conditions; others spoke highly of their housing.
One employee at Oriental Flavor, Hw (Kenny) Yang, said the apartment at Rolling Green is a significant improvement from the unpleasant housing he knew in Florida, where he worked before coming to Amherst.
“The house is clean,” he said. “The view is beautiful and the people are nice.”
While many owners and managers were hesitant to talk about pay practices, they more readily acknowledged providing employee housing as part of their compensation package. The Gazette found at least 13 Asian restaurants in Hampshire County where managers say they provide worker housing.
Some restaurateurs, like Michael Wou, owner of Teapot Restaurant in Northampton, buy large houses and live with their workers. Wou, who acknowledged providing employee housing at 8 Carpenter Ave. in Northampton, declined to comment on what he pays his workers.
“That’s secretive,” he said. “They all have it good.”
Five Teapot employees nervously declined to speak to the Gazette one morning as they left the house on their way to work, saying they were too busy to stop and talk. Chipping blue paint and overgrown shrubbery marked the exterior of the home.
Jay Zhang, owner of Dynasty Gourmet in Easthampton, said his four employees live in the house next to the one where he resides with his wife and children on West Street in Easthampton.
The two houses look remarkably different. The one occupied by Zhang and his family is impeccably maintained, with fresh siding and a patterned window in the front door, complete with gold-colored trim.
The other, where four employees live, has slouching walls, chipped paint and patches of bare wood. Giving a tour of the inside, Zhang said the four-bedroom space allows each worker his own room.
The rooms were sparsely furnished. A red couch sat in the otherwise empty living room. Three mattresses leaned against a wall in the hallway. In the kitchen, workers have a refrigerator, a microwave and a water cooler. Empty packages of Ramen noodles lined a neighboring table. In the next room, a hot plate sat plugged in on the counter beside a sink. There was no stove in sight.
Zhang said that when he first came to the U.S. from his native China as a teenager in 1998, the housing he shared with other workers was cramped and barely livable.
“Now,” he said, “it’s becoming much better.”
Prep cook Juan Carmelo answered the door at 5 Mill Valley Road in Hadley, the business address listed for Ginger Garden on corporate filings. The two-story home was sparsely furnished aside from a mattress positioned on the floor of the wooden living room floor. In the backyard, Carmelo displayed a vegetable garden he said is maintained by his roommates, chefs at Ginger Garden.
Originally from Guatemala and speaking only Spanish, Carmelo said he lived here with eight of his co-workers — three from Guatemala and five from China.
Carmelo, 30, stood shirtless inside the home’s kitchen, wearing basketball shorts and sandals and cooking soup on the one day he gets off each week. He’ll stay in this country for two more years, he said, and then return to Guatemala, where his wife and children remain. He said he makes $1,800 a month for between 240 and 288 hours of work — well under the $2,400 to $2,880 minimum wage (before adding overtime pay).
After finding a 17 North Maple Street address in corporate filings for Amherst’s Panda East, Gazette staffers rang the doorbell several times while standing on the cluttered porch of the home in Hadley. Tufts of disintegrating mattress were scattered around the porch and yard. Its source, an old mattress worn down to the springs, lay beside the front door, flanked by rolled-up carpeting, chairs, tables and a coffee maker.
The house was quiet. However, from behind came the sound of hammering. There, a Taiwanese man appeared in the upstairs back window.
The man said he worked as a server at Panda East, where he’s been for nine of the 30 years he has worked in American Chinese restaurants.
It’s a “very simple life,” he said of his work, adding that he and his wife and daughters were able to make a life here. “Just work, make money, love — nothing else.”
He said he makes less than $3,000 a month, but declined to be more specific or to comment about his pay or his hours. Nor, he said, did he want to give his name.
“I don’t want to talk too much because I don’t want to lose the job.”
In an initial interview with the Gazette, Osaka restaurant owner Mark Chen said he did not provide worker housing. However, city property records show that Chen owns a large house at 62 Conz St. not far from the Northampton restaurant, and workers can be seen bustling in and out of the house wearing Osaka uniforms.
When a Gazette reporter and photographer went to the house one night after the restaurant closed and found workers relaxing inside and outside the home, they knocked on the door. A Chinese woman who said she is a server at Osaka said the system works well for her.
Declining to give her name, the woman said she enjoys using the Chinatown job agencies to job-hop around the U.S., as it allows her to explore the country. The roughly $1,800 a month she makes in tips and wages works for her, she said, especially considering the free restaurant food and lack of housing costs.
“I know that may not seem like a lot to you, but we don’t pay rent or utility,” she said. Instead, “$1,800 goes right in our pocket.” She said she pays taxes on her wages, but not as much as if she were making more.
The worker answered questions in the doorway of the home and would not allow the Gazette to interview any other workers. The next day, the newspaper received a no-trespass letter from Osaka lawyer Michael Pill, ordering journalists to stay off the property and direct any questions about “any premises occupied as a residence by employees of Osaka Restaurant” to him or his colleague, Northampton attorney John J. Green.
Reached by phone, Green said the restaurant would have no further comment.
Amanda Drane can be reached at adrane@gazettenet.com.