|
Steve Kirk,
Executive Director
PO Box 343529
Florida City, FL 33034
Phone: (305) 242-2142
Fax: (305) 242-2143
Email
County
Served: Collier, Hendry, Miami-Dade, Okeechobee, St. Lucie
Incorporated:
1982
 Printer-Friendly Format
|
HISTORY
Rural Neighborhoods was incorporated as The Everglades Community Association in 1982 to prevent the threatened closure of a Miami-Dade County labor camp. The camp offered inexpensive but dilapidated shelter to 400 migrant households. It faced immediate closure because local government was incurring operating losses of $300,000 annually for the previous two years. Fifteen hundred peak season residents and employers needed harvest labor argued for the continuation of the camp. ECA was established as a broad-based coalition with a 21-member board of elected low-income tenants, church leaders, advocacy groups, school teachers, banks and business leaders.
From 1982 until the 1992 impact of Hurricane Andrew, ECA operated these 400 rental housing units – 150 year-round and 250 seasonal units. The nonprofit and its tenants retired nearly $2 million in debt and established $500,000 in reserves all without government subsidies and without and operating loss. After Hurricane Andrew ravaged the area, it was challenged to build 400 mobile homes destroyed by the storm. The organization increased its property management capacity after the storm beginning with 66 public housing units in 1994 which it purchased in 1999. A year later, it took on an additional 532 units and purchased the land and buildings in 1996.
|
