Shame on Slumlords

Gulfshore Life's Community Advisory Board is made up of opinion leaders from all over Southwest Florida. We've invited them to write on local issues they're most passionate about, with the hope that you will be moved to action, reflection, recognition-or even disagreement.

This month's author is Denise Cobb, a member of the board of trustees for the Guadalupe Center of Immokalee.

Picture this: two and three families sharing a double-wide trailer. Dozens of people living together in a substandard house. One hundred men crowded into a cement building sharing just a few bathrooms. Homes with no electricity or running water.

This may sound like a description from a Third World country. But it is happening within a short drive of our own homes, right here in Collier County. And these are not isolated incidents. We have a crisis in Immokalee, and we must act quickly to stop it.

As a board member of the Guadalupe Center of Immokalee, I recently took a tour with residents who are trying to do something to help. Unfortunately, there are two major stumbling blocks: slumlords and the fact that many of these people are undocumented migrant workers who have no recourse.

These are just some of the things that I saw and learned:

In an Immokalee trailer park, two families are paying $295 a week each (that is $590 a week or $2,300 a month) to rent what can only be described as a dilapidated one-bedroom trailer. The landlord refused to fix or replace their broken refrigerator, which was supposed to come with the rental. The trailer was without a roof and sidewall for three months because the landlord told them they could move out if they didn't like it. The Health Department finally got involved and made the owner repair the trailer. The pressure for them to move out then became an issue. Both families finally managed to find other housing, and the owner was happy to see them leave, because now he is renting the trailer to 14 Mexican farm workers and charges each of them $50 per week.

Another family of seven is living in a two-bedroom shack, utilities extra, with a tarp over the leaky roof. They're paying $200 a week. The landlord has threatened to evict them if they complain about the leaky tarp and broken refrigerator. After a few days of rain, their clothes and furniture and other belongings were soaked, and they were forced to live in a shelter for a few days. A local nonprofit organization tried to step in to pay their rent for two months so they could purchase new clothes and other household items. However, the landlord only gives them his first name, comes by on Sundays to collect the rent and refuses to accept a check.

Other families are paying $100 a week to rent a spot on which to put their small trailers, but when Hurricane Wilma damaged electrical connections and trees toppled over these trailers, they were told to go without electricity or pay $1,000 for new service poles. They were also told that they had to remove the trees that had fallen on their trailers themselves.

These rents rival some of the prices in Naples or Fort Myers.

Why are the living conditions so terrible? Why aren't basic repairs being made, and why are the rents so high? In a word . greed. The owners of these rentals know there is not much these renters can do. In fact, there was a fear among those I met who live in these uninhabitable places. No matter how you feel about the immigration debate, no one could drive out to Immokalee and feel this is how anyone should be treated in this country.

There is some hope. The grand opening of Milagro Place in south Immokalee was celebrated recently. Milagro (Spanish for miracle) is an affordable housing program from the Empowerment Alliance of Southwest Florida. The homes sell in the $85,000 to $90,000 price range. This compares to the cost of an old double-wide trailer just a few blocks away being sold for $110,000. There is a huge waiting list. But more must be done, and we've got to get moving on it right away.

Readers' Responses

In April, Community Advisory Board member Elliott Singer wrote "Let's Get the Planning Right," addressing concerns such as local roads, moderate-income housing and taxes. Here are two readers' reactions:

Monitor the Planning

Your article on planning

was very good. I have this to pass on: First shot across the bow was in 1929 when John Kunkel Small published From Eden To Sahara: Florida's Tragedy. Second shot was in 2002 when the Washington Post reported a top WCI Communities executive referring to the runaway development marching from Southwest Florida to the Everglades, saying, "You can't stop it. There's no power on earth that can stop it!"

In the late 1970s, Lee County put the Comprehensive Land Use Plan in place. It was a start, but the developer advocates have modified and changed it to accommodate developers. Four hundred and fifty acres of land fall daily in Florida, and 1,000 acres of wetlands fall each year to the developers, according to the same Washington Post story. We spend many dollars to control and monitor planning that is in place. In the early '70s, a company I managed paid more per hour to get workers to Collier County. Through the years some have moved here; now a developer has bought apartments to make them condos and kicked these workers out with 15 days notice. Bottom line: abuse of power.

-Charles A. Powell, Fort Myers

A Cost-of-Living Reality

Originally a bostonian

living in Los Angeles for 15 years, I vacation on Sanibel Island at my 20-year-old timeshare. I have been trying to find a rewarding job in Southwest Florida for three years. Interviewing with my company offices, Time Warner Cable, in Fort Myers, I find that my salary is the determining factor in relocating. In actuality, the cost of living from Los Angeles to Naples is the same according to the salary calculator for relocation, but not so for Fort Myers, which was 26 percent lower. The cost of housing in Florida has risen exponentially over the years, and the salary ranges for the local workers have not changed to meet the current cost of living.

At 53, I want to buy a home in Southwest Florida and work until retirement, which extends past 70 in this era. The homes are becoming very costly, and I would prefer to own a single home than pay the outrageous condominium association fees. Older homes are selling for the same price as new homes. I approve of the developer's concept of "lifestyle" choices, but they should also build for medium-income workers. Florida workers will travel quite a distance (Fort Lauderdale to Naples) from their affordable homes to work, which increases traffic on the freeways and surface roads, along with the cost of fuel. I find driving in Florida a delight compared to driving to work in the horrendous traffic of Los Angeles. If baby boomers are buying retirement homes in Florida now, the state will need to plan for the population explosion in the next few years.

-Karen Turczyn, Burbank, Calif.

Drop us a line at Insights, Gulfshore Life, 9051 Tamiami Trail N., Suite 202, Naples, FL 34108; or e-mail insights@curtco.com.