Author: Rural Neighborhoods

Home Economics

Rural Neighborhoods has built the best apartments available, period, in places like Immokalee, Labelle and Okeechobee, he said. “We’ve changed the perception of farm worker housing. I would be happy to live in any of our developments.” Read the article Gastronomica

The Builder

Former Gourmet editor and James Beard award-winner Barry Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from Immokalee, FL and presents a who’s who cast of characters in the tomato industry. This New York Times best-seller includes The Builder, a chapter highlighting Rural Neighborhood’s role in improving agricultural housing.

Stimulus Saves Farmworker Deal

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…

Immokalee Housing Project Fills Up

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…

Money Back

To do that, the Homestead-based nonprofit housing organization which provides affordable housing for rural poor, migrants and seasonal farmworkers in Collier, Hillsborough and Miami-Dade counties offers a program that gives tenants in their affordable housing developments 5 percent of their rent back to help them become a homeowner…. “We wish to encourage tenants to not…

Lawmakers Lose Their Way Over Affordable Housing

This past week our legislators slashed $190M in affordable housing construction. Just as essential elected officials broke faith with working people, investors and other governments as it violated signed loan commitments previously agreed. Such rash, unthinking action results in the loss of $1B in construction expenditures, a thousand jobs and the risk of bankruptcy to…

Former Governor Jeb Bush Continues Holiday Tradition for Migrants

Last week, just before Christmas, Jeb and Columba Bush stopped by the migrant camps in South Miami-Dade to have lunch – and start the annual Farmworker holiday celebration at Everglades Village, for the 10th year in a row. Columba Bush began the tradition a decade ago when her husband was still governor. She wanted to…

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