Proponents of a plan to provide permanent housing for South Dade farmworkers are not backing down from a key part that has come under fire in the last week. The housing plan developed by the Everglades Community Association includes the purchase of a trailer park in Leisure City that would provide temporary housing for about 1,500 farmworkers.
Read the article Plan Defended
“It took three years to get back to a sense of normalcy,” Kirk recalled. “In essence, Hurricane Andrew rebirthed Everglades Community Association from a local, inexperienced neighborhood group into an innovative and experienced statewide group focusing on rural communities. On her first visit to the spot last month, an Andrew survivor marveled at the improvements….
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…
The 120-acre mixed-use rental community is best described as A.A. – After Andrew. It is the reincarnation of a squalid mobile home park for migrant workers that was trashed by the 1992 hurricane. Of the 400 trailers – two sort of survived – while the demise of the others rendered 154 families instantly homeless. Rather…
The Handmade in Immokalee sewing class was the topic of a recent article by Naples Daily News reporter, Maria Perez. The sewing class started in November 2015 and is led by fashion designer, Gwendolyn Gleason. Each week, she works with students who are interested in learning to sew, whether for their own family, or to…
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…
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…