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Outline of Need:
Not long ago, Imelda was a farmworker. She and Alfredo lived in the subsidized Harden Ranch Housing Project where many other farmworker families live. It was nice, but it wasn't their own. While there, Alfredo attended school to improve his English skills to work in his profession. Alfredo is an engineer.
How Rural Development Helped:
Imelda Guzman and her husband Alfredo Manriquez now own their home in the quiet Castroville neighborhood called Moro Cojo. They painted it yellow. It's a very nice, new three-bedroom house that she and Alfredo helped build as part of the Self Help Housing Program through USDA Rural Development. They have a front lawn, trees and flowers in the garden where their three children play safely.
The Results:
Now Imelda and Alfredo talk of buying more property for investment. Alfredo finished school and quickly found a job with an engineering firm designing buildings, roadways and bridges on computer. They have earned the American Dream with hard work and a little help.
"I would recommend that other people do what we did," said Imelda. "Families that are working, but don't have money for a down payment ... this program can help you."
Buying a home is an American dream for many farmworkers in California. Factors that work against that dream include the high cost of rental housing in California that slows the build-up of a down payment to buy your own housing "nest egg". But success stories like this one of Imelda and Alfredo are showing that the American dream of home ownership can true.
USDA Rural Development programs offer low income families and individuals the opportunity to break out of that "no savings" cycle. Farm Labor Housing Direct Loan and Grant Programs provide assistance to affordable housing developers and agencies to create or improve multi-family apartment-style housing. The purpose of these funding programs is to make decent rental housing affordable to farmworkers and their families so they aren't spending so much of their earnings on housing.
In Fiscal Year 2002, $16.3 million in Rural Development loans and grants went to construct 325 affordable housing units for farmworker families in California. An additional $2.8 million went to upgrade and repair farmworker housing in California. The next step is to move from rental to ownership. Rural Development has several programs to assist low-income families to accomplish the ownership challenge. Imelda and Alfredo utilized the Self Help Housing Program to qualify for a low-interest, low monthly payment, low down payment loan in return for investing their own "sweat equity." Under this program a group of families share the labor to work under the direction of a qualified builder and commit to 1,400 hours in a one to two-year period. At the end they have their own homes.
During Fiscal Year 2002, $105.1 million has been approved for use in building low and very-low income single family homes in California through Rural Development loan programs. That is roughly a thousand new affordable homes for people who need them. With an average of four persons in a household, this means that approximately 4,000 more people are now living in their own homes, most for the very first time.
(January 2003)
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