After the Storm

“They’re beautiful homes. There are places for kids to play,” said Carmen Roqueta, director of Tenant Services for Everglades Community Association, which manages farm worker housing properties throughout Florida. “No one can ever believe that’s housing for farm workers.” Read the article Better Place

The 120-acre mixed-use rental community is best described as A.A. – After Andrew. It is the reincarnation of a squalid mobile home park for migrant workers that was trashed by the 1992 hurricane. Of the 400 trailers – two sort of survived – while the demise of the others rendered 154 families instantly homeless. Rather…

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…

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…

Cypress Cove is among the recent developments to benefit from the Tax Credit Assistance Program and the exchange funds that Congress passed as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to bolster LIHTC construction during the economic turndown. Read the article AFH Making Farmworker Housing Mainstream 2012

Four months ago, a 14-member board of deep South Dade growers, migrants, ministers and businessmen took over operation of the 400-trailer Everglades Migrant Labor Camp south of Florida City. The camp was hastily developed by Metro nine years ago to cope with a migrant housing crisis and a smallpox epidemic. Last summer, Metro commissioners voted…