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 looking very good for us to start construction by Oct. 1, said Enrique Vazquez, deputy director.
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…
U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello visited the ”poorest of the poor” victims of Hurricane Andrew on Saturday at a migrant camp on the edge of the Everglades. Everglades Labor Camp, a dusty, muddy sprawl in the flat grasses that abut the entrance to Everglades National Park, was almost overlooked after the storm. It’s not on…
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…
Collier County is considering new rules that supporters say will improve conditions in mobile home parks, but others argue they don’t go far enough in requiring park owners to replace all substandard trailers. Read the article Collier County Looks to Change Rules for Owners
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…
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…