Migrant Workers’ Lives Are Uprooted by Storm

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…

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…

When Carmen Rivera gets to work every morning, she checks her office for messages and then starts walking. She’s a social worker who goes door-to-door at the Everglades farmworker camp, which houses about 400 families, visiting residents and identifying needs. She rarely has time to sit down in her sparsely furnished office. But when the…

Without the stimulus funding, the project “would have died on the vine,” says Kevin Tatreau, director of multifamily development for Florida Housing Finance Corporation.  “Stimulus allowed for less than 60% AMI, says Steven Kirk, President of Rural Neighborhoods. “We try to get as many units set aside for extremely low income so farmworkers can take…

National public accounting firm Cohn Reznick Group profiles Rural Neighborhoods in a short video. Tom Neibaur, Director of Operations says, “We can put up the bricks and mortar, that’s the easy part. We could never have mastered the finance and accounting intricacies of our project without Cohn Reznick Group’s help.” Please click on the full…