BRADENTON HERALD October 25, 2006
Charity to build Arcadia farmworker homes
ARCADIA - For the past three years, Dolores and Fidel Arias have lived in a home on the 500 block of Gloria Street with four of their 10 children, after immigrating from Mexico. The couple pays $350 each month for the house lined with red, pink and yellow flowers and a single palm tree. It is a place they can finally call their own. "I'm in love with it," Dolores Arias said, touring the three-bedroom, one-story home. The Arias family home is what officials at Catholic Charities Housing, Diocese of Venice Inc., hope to provide for upwards of 700 farmworkers and family members in their planned Casa San Juan Bosco housing project. The sprawling 86-acre pasture that sits at 2316 S.E. Hillsborough Ave. will be blessed at 11 a.m. Saturday by bishops John J. Nevins and Frank Dewane, a month before construction of the $21 million project is planned to break ground. The development is designed to provide farmworkers with affordable homes that are hurricane-proof and family-friendly. Because many farmworkers leave homes and family members abroad when they come to work in the United States, being able to afford a home will reunite families here, said Sister Ann DeNicolo, program director for Catholic Charities. "Our hope is that it's a step to adapting to a lifestyle here in the United States," DeNicolo said. "To get their own home and raise their children." A total of 125 homes with two, three and four bedrooms will be erected. The project is designed as a community equipped with a park, nature preserve, community center and soccer and baseball fields. Residents can also attend on-site education and employment training, health care and homeownership training and take advantage of an on-site child care facility. A van stationed at the development will shuttle residents reporting to work or running errands. "It's really a community within a community," DeNicolo said. "This is, for me, a dream come true." But farmworker housing projects have not always been embraced by neighboring communities. Village of Hope in Myakka City, a 59-unit development also headed by Catholic Charities, met with backlash from neighbors who said the project would bring excess noise, traffic and crime. Likewise, a 40-unit farmworker housing project outside of Palmetto proposed by the Manatee County Housing Authority received the same reviews from residents nearby. But DeNicolo said the Hillsborough Avenue site has gone over well so far in the community. "We're holding our breath and hoping," she said. Named after St. John Bosco, an Italian priest who founded the Salesian Society, which is devoted to educating and caring for underprivileged children worldwide, the project's homes will be rented to families with at least one member who earns 51 percent of wages as a farmworker, DeNicolo said. Rental rates will depend on income levels. "This is way for them to build credit," she said. Homes will be able to withstand 200 mph winds, necessary after much of the farmworker housing was destroyed when Hurricane Charley swept through in August 2004. The community center, equipped with a generator, will act as a shelter in case of emergencies. "If they don't have a place to stay, then they don't pick the crops," DeNicolo said. "In a way, we're acting like mentors for them in adapting to a new culture. We need to remember the immigrants we all were."
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