“Cip” Garza remembers the Everglades Labor Camp when hundreds of migrant families stayed in broken down trailers with leaky roofs, sagging floors and no electricity. Read the article Farm Laborers Getting New Housing Complex
The new housing complex, developed by the Everglades Community Association (ECA), a nonprofit agency that maintains both the Royal Colonial and the Andrew Center, is being paid for with $41.2 million in grants and loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service; additionally, the We Will Rebuild Foundation, a private nonprofit group founded…
Juanita Mainster’s own life motivates her to rewrite the usual script for children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers. The 42-year-old can easily recall being rounded up by the Border Patrol in fields north of Brownsville, Texas, and deported to Mexico — even though she was a U.S. citizen. “My parents were undocumented, so I got…
A seed planted more than 20 years ago in South Dade is finally yielding a harvest. The last of 240 foundations for single-family homes has been poured at the Everglades Farmworkers Villages…. The first 69 homes will be ready for families at the end of January – the result of a process that was first…
An effort by Naranja Lakes residents to block construction of farmworker housing near their hurricane-ravaged neighborhood failed Tuesday when Metro commissioners overwhelmingly approved the project. Rejecting worries about more crime and poverty encroaching on the area, the commissioners voted 11-1 to go ahead with a plan for temporary housing for 300 migrant families on 42…
One of South Dade’s Farmworker communities is on the move. After months of delays, the Everglades Community Association has begun relocating trailers to a temporary site in Leisure City. Once the move is complete, construction of permanent housing will begin at the ECA site outside Florida City. “The funds have been allocated and thinks are…
The residents of Naranja Lakes and environs — living in a square mile of South Dade in not much better shape than the day after Hurricane Andrew — often feel like the storm’s forgotten victims. Their self-interests — some legitimate — now threaten careful plans to house temporarily other oft-ignored residents: migrant farmworker families. Read…
About 150 farmworkers and their children packed the Metro- Dade County Commission chambers Thursday afternoon to have their say about a controversial proposal to relocate farmworkers while permanent housing is built for them in South Dade. But they didn’t get a chance to speak. Read the article Farmworkers at Meeting
Proponents of a plan to provide permanent housing for South Dade farmworkers are not backing down from a key part that has come under fire in the last week. The housing plan developed by the Everglades Community Association includes the purchase of a trailer park in Leisure City that would provide temporary housing for about 1,500 farmworkers. Read…
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