FOX 13 (Tampa)

December 8, 2006

Stronger, tougher, better: new homes provide solution for migrant workers

CLEWISTON - While news coverage of Hurricane Wilma’s fury focused on wealthy areas like Palm Beach, migrant farm workers across South Florida’s agriculture belt who could afford it the least were the hardest hit.     

Wilma devastated the migrant farm worker communities of Clewiston and Morehaven around Lake Ockeechobee. But now, growers have teamed up with the government to build tough, storm-resistant migrant housing statewide. 

“Hot food, that’s what we need right now,” said Michael Gilbert, a farm worker, after the storm.  “You can see we have no water, and no electricity.” 

Not only did those workers lose their homes, they lost everything else.  That included their jobs, after thousands of sugar cane fields were flattened. 

U.S. Sugar’s sprawling processing plant was heavily damaged, but it’s the migrants who still struggle to recover.  Many haven’t come back. 

A year later, with the help of a Hillsborough grower and University of Florida researchers, they have an answer in prototype: migrant housing that won’t blow away. 

“This new house is built with state of the art, insulated paneling,” said Inez Banks-Dubose of HUD.  “It can withstand a category 4 hurricane with winds up to 150 miles per hour.”

With the government putting new pressure on the undocumented, growers are finding it harder and harder to find enough farm workers.  But advocates say, if they build these hurricane-resistant homes, the workers will come.

“Agriculture has to compete for the people to work on our farms like we never have before, and I think that’s going to be an incentive for other growers across the state to engage and be involved in housing for their employees,” said grower Jay Taylor.

The two-bedroom prototype, designed to house five workers, costs less than $100 per square foot.  The secret?  Interlocking structural panels filled with foam and compressed in bedrock sheets. 

“You slide over, slide it in, turn your cam key, which locks it, and four more times in an eight foot wall, and you have just laid the equivalent of 80 concrete blocks in about five minutes timeframe, said Roy Bentley of Insulated Component Structures of Florida.

That’s a long way from the trailers so vulnerable to storms—if the growers will build them.

HUD says it will offer loans and financial packages to entice the growers, and the University of Florida researchers who helped design the hurricane homes say they will long outlive the mobile homes, making them a good investment.