Ocean City Experiencing Staff and Housing Shortages this Season
George Shivers • July 20, 2021
Each year, businesses in Ocean City, Md., require about 12,000 seasonal workers overall. One-third of these workers come from abroad with J-1 visas. Back in March of this year, there was concern that President Biden had not eased travel bans on foreign student workers.
Last summer, after Proclamation 10014 by then-President Trump, foreign workers were not permitted entry because of covid-19 restrictions. A later action by Trump, Proclamation 10052, suspended the entry of aliens who presented a risk to the U.S. labor market after the coronavirus outbreak.
Biden revoked 10014 in March, but not 10052, which expired automatically on March 31. Unfortunately, only a fraction of the J-1 visa students were able to come, resulting in businesses having to turn to “adjusted business models,” such as altering the days or hours they are opened or limiting services or the menu options they provide.
The result may be longer lines and closures. It’s true that more students have come this year than last, but the workforce is still much smaller, primarily due to ongoing delays at the embassies and consulates overseas. On top of that, the number of visitors to Ocean City has increased dramatically.
The Intrax Cultural Exchange and Educational Program is a sponsoring organization that facilitates the J-1 program locally. The organization also expressed concern about adequate housing for seasonal workers. In an article in the Salisbury Daily Times, Matthew Prensky and Emily Lytle noted that there has been some discussion in Ocean City of “exploring new foreign labor options, including using more H-2B workers from other countries, such as El Salvador. Pensky and Lyle went on to report that “having already seen what life would be like without J-1 visa students, businesses don’t want this to be the reality going forward.”
Ocean City’s economy has grown substantially over the last 30 years, and developers have built more and more hotels and condominiums, all of which are high-price properties. With more businesses, more seasonal workers were needed, but affordable workforce housing has lagged behind the need, a fact that may be attributed to high construction costs and land prices.
In addition to financing, local zoning rules are an obstacle for potential developers of housing for workers. As of June of this year, the Greater Ocean City Chamber of Commerce was in the early stages of a project that would house up to 300 seasonal workers. The chamber hopes to have these units ready for occupancy by next year.
The Ocean City Development Corporation is another organization that is attacking the problem by providing financial incentives to get projects started. Their current project is a 50-bed unit on Dorchester St., but it has required two grants from the state to get done, according to the organization’s executive director. Ocean City has always considered housing for seasonal workers a private matter, but now it’s clear that government intervention is necessary to incentivize low-cost housing for workers.
Sources:
Matthew Prensky, “The Housing Squeeze,” Salisbury Daily Times, 6/27/2021, https://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/local/maryland/2021/06/24/ocean-city-maryland-affordable-housing-md-labor-shortage-2021/7589503002/
Matthew Prensky and Emily Lyle, “Beach businesses are understaffed. You could miss these favorites due to labor shortage. Salisbury Daily Times, https://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/local/maryland/2021/07/14/ocean-city-md-delaware-beaches-labor-shortage-impact-due-j-1-visas-foreign-workers/7775004002/
Shawn Soper, Maryland Coastal Dispatch, 3/4/2021, https://mdcoastdispatch.com/2021/03/04/foreign-workers-availability-for-summer-remains-unknown-existing-ban-expires-march-31-but-hope-was-for-earlier-lift/
A native of Wicomico County, George Shivers holds a doctorate from the University of Maryland and taught in the Foreign Language Dept. of Washington College for 38 years before retiring in 2007. He is also very interested in the history and culture of the Eastern Shore, African American history in particular.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
More than 30,000 of our neighbors in Maryland’s first congressional district will lose their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid because of provisions in the GOP’s heartless tax cut and spending bill passed last week.
Right now, Congress is working on a fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs in order to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.
The House Agriculture Committee recently voted, along party lines, to advance legislation that would cut as much as $300 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, helping more than 41 million people in the U.S. pay for food. With potential cuts this large, it helps to know who benefits from this program in Maryland, and who would lose this assistance. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled data on SNAP beneficiaries by congressional district, cited below, and produced the Maryland state datasheet , shown below. In Maryland, in 2023-24, 1 in 9 people lived in a household with SNAP benefits. In Maryland’s First Congressional District, in 2023-24: Almost 34,000 households used SNAP benefits. Of those households, 43% had at least one senior (over age 60). 29% of SNAP recipients were people of color. 15% were Black, non-Hispanic, higher than 11.8% nationally. 6% were Hispanic (19.4% nationally). There were 24,700 total veterans (ages 18-64). Of those, 2,200 lived in households that used SNAP benefits (9%). The CBPP SNAP datasheet for Maryland is below. See data from all the states and download factsheets here.
Apparently, some people think that the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” is a foregone conclusion, and that the struggle over the budget and Trump’s agenda is over and done. Not true. On Sunday night, the bill — given the alternate name “Big Bad Bullsh*t Bill” by the Democratic Women’s Caucus — was voted out of the House Budget Committee. The GOP plan is to pass this legislation in the House before Memorial Day. But that’s not the end of it. As Jessica Craven explained in her Chop Wood Carry Water column: “Remember, we have at least six weeks left in this process. The bill has to: Pass the House, Then head to the Senate where it will likely be rewritten almost completely, Then be passed there, Then be brought back to the House for reconciliation, And then, if the House changes that version at all, Go back to the Senate for another vote.” She adds, “Every step of that process is a place for us to kill it.” The bill is over a thousand pages long, and the American people will not get a chance to read it until it has passed the House. But, thanks to 5Calls , we know it includes:
Let's talk about our Eastern Shore Delegation, the representatives who are supposed to fight for our nine Shore counties in Annapolis, and what they actually got up to this session.
For the first time in recent memory, Virginia Democrats have candidates running in all 100 House of Delegates districts — a milestone party leaders and grassroots organizers say reflects rising momentum as President Donald Trump’s second term continues to galvanize opposition.
