“Equipo Viviendas” Takes Action for Latino and Immigrant Communities

Editor’s Note: This guest column was written by Guy Gambill, who is a community leader and Coalition board member.

On January 12, 2006, a wide variety of policy-makers, providers, advocates, community members and concerned parties joined together at the Resource Center of the Americas in Minneapolis to address the issues of homelessness, affordable housing and systems access in the greater metropolitan area.

A wide range of Latino community members and organizations, planned this event to promote discussion on these critical community issues:

• Predatory Lending. Alexa Martin of ACORN ceded the microphone to a group of eight community members representing over 80 families who have been victimized by predatory lending practices in Hennepin County. These families have been severely impacted through the actions of one real estate broker active in the greater metropolitan area. In some instances, families have ended up either homeless or precariously housed as a result of these practices.
• Manufactured Home Parks. Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria of APAC (All Parks Alliance for Change) outlined a view of the gradual erosion of manufactured home parks in the State of Minnesota over a five-year period of time, noting that 16 parks have been closed–impacting hundreds of people (60 percent of whom have been Latinos.) The latest instance about to occur in Bloomington with a mobile home park named Shady Lane. The closure of this park, effective April 1, 2006, will displace an additional 44 families, many of whom will become homeless.

Substandard Housing. Ana Santamaria of Family and Children’s Services presented a photo-documentary of renters in the Latino community residing in Minneapolis. Over the course of months, Ana documented how dozens of families lived in sub-standard housing throughout Minneapolis. Many of these victimized families lived in condemned buildings with no running water or heat, lead and asbestos levels over federal guidelines, and other unsafe conditions. Ultimately, her efforts resulted in one property manager being driven out of business.

• Organizing.Angel Morales of Latinos en Accion (Latinos en Action) and also of Mid-Town Latino Organization Project(MLOP), which serves as an organizing entity for services in the Longfellow, Corcoran and Howe neighborhoods, chronicled his work to organize families around the issues of housing, education and legal advocacy.
• Legal Issues Facing the Latino Community. Silvia Ontaneda of Centro Legal spoke about the mission of her organization within the community. Centro Legal works with a wide array of legal issues impacting members of the Latino community, and they assist many homeless or marginally housed community members. Michael Friedman of Legal Rights Center also presented on legal trends. Michael outlined the mission of the Legal Rights Center and detailed the work they do around the issues of discriminatory housing practice, clearing of unlawful detainers, expungements, and police and community interactions. He also provided instances where, seemingly, Latino community members had been targeted by members of law enforcement. The segment finished with commentary on the need for greater integration of legal systems working on housing advocacy.

In the wake of this community forum , there have been many positive results: Ana Santamaria has received grant monies to continue her advocacy, APAC continues to gather force in its efforts to re-define affordable housingto include manufacture homes, Silvia Ontaneda has organized a conference for 398 Latina women who will organize to do community advocacy; and ACORN–with the assistance of new allies–continues its fight against predatory lending practices.

The group of advocates who organized the forum continues to meet under the name Equipo Viviendas (the “Housing Team”) to organize efforts around affordable housing, homelessness and systems access.

For more information, contact Guy Gambill at gambillgt1@yahoo.com.