Metro Approves Migrant Housing in Leisure City

“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

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…

Agricultural workers play an important part in Okeechobee’s economy. An apartment complex has just opened that is especially designed for that segment of our population. The Oaks at Shannon’s Crossing held a grand opening and ribbon cutting.  

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…

Metro Commissioner Larry Hawkins wants to block the purchase of a South Dade trailer park that is  a key part of a permanent housing plan for farmworkers in South Dade. The housing plan developed  by the Everglades Community Association was unanimously approved three months ago by the  Metro-Dade Commission. It hinges on the county buying…

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…