SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNEOctober 28, 2006 $21M housing project opens doors By CHRISTINA E. SANCHEZ
ARCADIA -- Maria Dolores Arias taps her foot on the tile floor of her new three-bedroom house, amazed it does not sink in like a trampoline.
She could not imagine moving back to her family's rusty metal double-wide trailer. Arias, 46, her husband and six sons had no air conditioning there. The creaky, warped floors sank from lack of support.
Bad as their old trailer was, it was better than most in the area. Affordable housing options for farmworker families like the Ariases have always been scarce in Arcadia, and the shortage was exacerbated by the destructive winds of Hurricane Charley.
But in their new home, the Ariases are part of an affordable housing revolution under way in Arcadia and other parts of Florida for farmworkers and other low-income families.
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Venice chose the Ariases to be the model family for its $21 million farmworker housing project in Arcadia, one of the first non-employer owned developments for farmworkers in Florida. The initiative mirrors the San Jose Mission in Hillsborough County, a 34-acre complex opened in 2005 by Catholic Charities of St. Petersburg.
Two more developments for low-income families in Myakka City and Port Charlotte also are in the planning stages, said Sister Cathy Buster, vice president of Catholic Charities Housing, Diocese of Venice. Buster spearheaded the Arcadia project.
Casa San Juan Bosco, as the Arcadia development is billed, includes 125 energy-efficient homes with two, three and four bedrooms that can withstand up to 200 mph hurricane-force winds.
A groundbreaking ceremony for Casa San Juan Bosco is scheduled for 11 a.m. today at the 86-acre development site. Construction is slated to begin in the winter.
Because $6 million of the project is funded by grants from the federal Department of Agriculture, farmworkers must earn at least half of their income in the fields and be in the country legally to live there.
Plans call for a community center, on-site education classes, child care, health services, a soccer field, a ball park and a play area. Rents will be between $300 and $400 a month.
The development will provide homes for about 700 farmworkers -- big by farmworker housing standards, but only a small portion of Arcadia's agricultural work force.
Before Hurricane Charley in 2004, as many as 11,000 workers called Arcadia their seasonal home to pick in the orange groves. Since the storm, that number has dropped to between 7,000 and 8,000 farmworkers because there are not enough affordable places to live.
Boarded windows, tarps on rooftops and metal mobile home frames serve as haunting reminders that Charley's wrath destroyed nearly 60 percent of low-income housing in Arcadia, leaving fewer places for farmworkers and poor families to rent.
"Casa San Juan Bosco will improve the quality of their lives, give them confidence and help them establish their citizenship," Buster said.
Arcadia farmworkers are paid $6 to $9 to fill one Jacuzzi-size tub of picked oranges. They fill about 10 a day.
"Wages haven't changed, but rents have gone up and there's price-gouging for dumpy trailers," said Sister Ann DeNicolo program director for Catholic Charities of DeSoto County. "And many places want first, last and deposit."
The need for affordable housing for low-income families and farmworkers was apparent even before Charley, DeNicolo said.
Arcadia is a ranch and orange grove community of about 6,000 people. Despite a section of the city that is concentrated with business chains such as Wal-Mart and Burger King, the city has little industry. In 2000, the median household income was $25,025, the most recent numbers available from the U.S. Census Bureau. By comparison, the median income in Bradenton the same year was $35,000.
DeNicolo said she was appalled by the housing situation when she arrived in Arcadia six years ago. She had previously worked in Louisiana, where she helped women with transitional living assistance.
Some slum landlords, she learned, crowd 15 farmworkers into a single-wide trailer, charging each $35 a week.
"And it was pay up or get out," she said recently driving by the site of a former trailer camp, a vacant lot since the hurricane. "But there was nowhere else to go."
No air conditioning and tight quarters make the inside of the trailers like ovens. Workers who are tired and hot from a 15-hour day in the fields take the screens out the windows to let in any hint of a breeze, but that lets in mosquitoes.
Rows of gangrene-colored mobile homes from the 1960s and 1970s line Arcadia's streets. Some are without running water. Chickens run around on dirt, weed-filled front lawns. Insulation is dropping out from the bottom of the trailers.
"If we provide decent housing, our whole work force will be different," DeNicolo said. "We can make this a place where people want to raise their families."
Affordable housing needs extend beyond the Arcadia city limits. Several communities in Florida where agriculture is the leading economic engine do not have enough reduced rent dwellings for farmworkers, the backbone of the industry.
In Manatee County, for example, a federal Housing Development survey released in 2005 revealed that nearly 18,000 farmworkers lived in substandard or unsafe housing.
Together, Sisters DeNicolo and Buster hope to change the attitude about affordable housing in the diocese's 10-county area.
Marian Manor in Port Charlotte is the second project that Catholic Charities has planned. The $4 million project seeks to build a 31-unit apartment complex for low-income mothers with infants.
In eastern Manatee County, the group is seeking approvals from commissioners to build the Oaks of Myakka, a 58-unit complex for working families.
The Ariases are among the first families to benefit from the Catholic Charities vision.
Fidel Arias, 48, has labored in Arcadia's fields for 28 years. He saved enough money to be able to legally bring his wife and six sons from Mexico three years ago. The oldest son is 26 and the youngest is 11. Four daughters still live in Mexico.
The Ariases pay $350 a month for their three-bedroom, fully-furnished "dream home." They moved into their peach-colored terra-cotta house with the manicured lawn trimmed with petunias and violets in June.
Maria Arias, who takes English and citizenship classes while the boys are in school, has a smile from ear to ear as she speaks about her home.
"The first few days I just kept looking around," she said. "I still can't believe it. It is a dream."
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