Farmworkers Get Cabinet Support

Without the stimulus funding, the project “would have died on the vine,” says Kevin Tatreau, director of multifamily development for Florida Housing Finance Corporation.  “Stimulus allowed for less than 60% AMI, says Steven Kirk, President of Rural Neighborhoods. “We try to get as many units set aside for extremely low income so farmworkers can take…

“Everglades Village is a much larger planned community than you would find in a typical tax-credit project or USDA-funded project,” says Steve Kirk, ECA’s executive Director, “Our Planning process was to build more of a self-contained community. Read the article Planning Magazine:  Migrant Not Homeless

Marisol Avenir has spent the past four months living in a place she calls paradise. It’s a stone’s throw from the Dade County prison on a road that leads to farmland once devoured by Hurricane Andrew. “In Homestead,” she says, “I’ve lived in three different places. I’m super happy here.” Read the article East Coast…

Unaccompanied workers are usually faced with the “last-least shelter” in a rural community; isolated units or ones far below building code requirements that at the “least” desirable housing in a local community and the “last” to be rented. Read the article Rural Voices

Former Gourmet editor and James Beard award-winner Barry Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from Immokalee, FL and presents a who’s who cast of characters in the tomato industry. This New York Times best-seller includes The Builder, a chapter highlighting Rural Neighborhood’s role in improving agricultural housing.

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…