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 discussed in the early 1970s.
Magali Perez, 25, remembers coming home from her job at a plant nursery, hoping she was next in line to use the kitchen shared by four families living under one roof. They shared one stove, so they had to cook and eat in shifts. She and her husband, Ramiro, and their five children now have…
“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
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…
When Carmen Rivera gets to work every morning, she checks her office for messages and then starts walking. She’s a social worker who goes door-to-door at the Everglades farmworker camp, which houses about 400 families, visiting residents and identifying needs. She rarely has time to sit down in her sparsely furnished office. But when the…
Rural Neighborhoods is honored to be a co-author in the book NeighborWorks Works: Practical Solutions from America’s Community Development Network. The recently released publication consists of case studies of the best work being done in community development as well as innovative solutions in affordable housing. Our excerpt “Nonprofit Takeovers: Tools for Tough Times” describes our…
Less than two years after the Everglades Community Association began a 500-unit project to house farm workers, 240 homes have been completed, 135 families have moved ir, and bids on the project’s second phases are expected to go out next month. Everglades Villages, south of Florida City on the way to Everglades National Park, is…