Like many areas of Collier county, residential development is slowly picking up in Immokalee, where developers are building new homes for low-income renters and for buyers willing to pay $179,900 or more. Read the article Immokalee’s Home Stretch
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…
It’s been a month since the family moved from Michigan, said Andrea’s mother, Heather Rodriguez, and they’re still settling into their new lives in Florida. It’s been an adjustment, she said, but a welcome one. “We’ve never lived in such a pretty place,” Rodriguez, 29, said of the new two-bedroom, two-bathroom town home the family…
Juanita Mainster’s own life motivates her to rewrite the usual script for children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers. The 42-year-old can easily recall being rounded up by the Border Patrol in fields north of Brownsville, Texas, and deported to Mexico — even though she was a U.S. citizen. “My parents were undocumented, so I got…
The challenges of site acquisition, land use, and competitive financing are no different in communities targeting agricultural workers than in other affordable rental communities, said Kirk. “The added complexity in serving farmworkers is to understand agricultural markets and wages, and to layer sufficient subsidies to reach affordability.” Read the article Seeds of Change
Big Cypress Housing Corp. Inc. plans to develop rental housing units for legal migrant and seasonal farmworkers in Immokalee, west of Carson Road. The nonprofit housing organization will construct 92 multifamily rental housing units on the 20-acre property, named the Reserves at Eden Gardens. Read the article New Family Housing
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…