In Homestead, farmworkers have a choice of living in what one resident calls paradise. The community is called Everglades Village. The housing project was built by an organization called the Everglades Community Association, a public-private group whose goal is to build decent and affordable housing for farmworkers.
Read the article Group to Build Housing for Immokalee Farmworkers
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…
“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
Rural Neighborhoods and two south Florida non-profit organizations urged Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez to reconsider his executive action to comply with ICE non-binding, two-day “detainer” requests after President Donald Trump threatened to deny unspecified Federal grants to cities and counties that don’t fully cooperate with immigration authorities. The heads of the Coalition of Florida Farmworker Organizations and Centro Campesino joined Steven Kirk…
For a week, the migrant workers and field hands in the spartan Everglades Labor Camp four miles west of this farming center found themselves at the end of the relief lines, ignored and isolated as they battled hunger, thirst and then the weekend’s rains. Time and again, an ambulance or police car would stop, residents said…
Rural Neighborhoods has built the best apartments available, period, in places like Immokalee, Labelle and Okeechobee, he said. “We’ve changed the perception of farm worker housing. I would be happy to live in any of our developments.” Read the article Gastronomica
Just before Thanksgiving 1982, Donato Garcia burst into Trailer 3-6 at Everglades Migrant Labor Camp, joyous with news of “the elections” that would at last bring power to the farmworker. His wife Matilda remained silent — gazing at the unpaid rent bill and the barren refrigerator. “Please, Donato,” she remembers saying. “Don’t get into it….