Page 29 - Magazine 1-winter 2017

Habitat Container Magazine Smart and Sustainable Habitats Winter 2017 Habitat Container Magazine November 1, 2017
Representative Darren Soto, an Orlando congressman of Puerto Rican descent, said new apartment rental units are being built at a brisk pace. But there are not enough, and only some will offer low rents. Until more units are ready, he said, “we will have to be vigilant to make sure no one falls off their housing.”
Some Puerto Rican community leaders are encouraging the newcomers to head north to New York or Philadelphia, where state benefits are more robust and there are fewer new arrivals.
“The reality is these families are here, and we put out the welcome mat, so now it is our responsibility that their transitions are seamless,” said Marucci Guzmán, the executive director of Latino Leadership, a grass-roots group in Orlando that has helped hundreds of newly arrived Puerto Ricans. “This is not the land of Mickey Mouse, and the streets aren’t paved with gold.”
Even for those who have found a safe place to land, the heartbreak of leaving the island remains.
As her three children played in the living room of her sister-in-law’s apartment, Ms. Santiago said the last two months had been excruciating. Her rental house in Humacao, a badly hit municipality near where the hurricane made landfall, was inundated with thigh-high water. A house she was building was also wrecked, taking her investment along with it. She lost her job at a hotel that still has not reopened and her husband, who worked at a luxury hotel, El Conquistador, could not wait the months that it would take to reopen.
“Outside the house,” she said, “the water was to my neck.
“We lost everything.”
But now there are new losses to endure, she said. Her mother and her two teenage brothers had to stay behind. “My mom stayed alone with my brothers,” Ms. Santiago said. “They lost their roof, their doors. They lost everything, too. I am filled with worry now about the fact they stayed, and so it’s very difficult.”
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