Okeechobee Center residents give poor reviews to Housing Authority
BELLE GLADE, Fla. — Only an hour from Florida’s upscale golf courses and beaches popular with tourists, roaches and rats regularly make an appearance.
Welcome to the Okeechobee Center rural housing complex, where residents say the Belle Glade Housing Authority is falling down on the job of creating a livable place for agricultural workers who help feed Florida and many Americans beyond.
The housing authority project was made possible through the federal government in 1947. The housing has 724 units between Okeechobee Center and Osceola, another government-funded project located in Belle Glade. It is mandatory that tenants who wish to live in the Okeechobee Center to have migrant workers employed in agriculture.
The housing authority’s main goal is to establish homes for low-income families who could not afford regular housing. Okeechobee Center tenants pay an affordable rent each month but deal with issues such as rats and roaches crawling on residents’ faces while sleeping at night.
A fellow resident of the Okeechobee Center, Kehtia Istache, 29, has worked on the cornfield staff for five years at the sugar mill.
“There is a lot of mildew in the bathroom and the showerhead has not been fixed yet. It’s been about four months since we have reported it to the main office,” said Istache.
Istache is not alone when reporting how long it takes housing authority to come fix their appliances.
“They’ll come paint our walls, but they take their time with everything else,” said Istache.
Istache also claims that one of the reasons why housing authority officials are actually coming out more is because of the recent news coverage.
“They wouldn’t be coming out as quick as they are now, if it wasn’t for them being on the news,” said Istache.
Some people who live here have a different take on why some residents have rats and roaches while others don’t.
“Some people who have rats have them because of where their house is located,” said Jordan Smith, 26, a tenant at Okeechobee Center. “If your house is near the fields, you’re gonna get more rats.”
Smith added that some people who have roaches may not clean their houses as often as they should.
Throughout the Okeechobee Center, some homes seem to be clean on the outside with welcome mats and wind chimes for the aesthetic while there are other homes that look like no one resides in them with empty bottles and cans scattered throughout the lawn, and long unkempt grass.
But even the clean tenants are not exempt from the waiting list on the housing authority that people seem to be having at Okeechobee Center.
Ana Escobedo, 33, works with her husband, Sinforso Todo, 34, packing grass pallets.
“I have kids, so I try to keep the house as clean as possible so that we won’t have to deal with roaches or rats. When we do get roaches, I just spray and kill them myself. I don’t call the main office,” said Escobedo.
However, Escobedo did make a call to the main office about her air conditioning that stopped working recently. The main office sent someone in two hours.
“Some things they do come and fix faster than others,” said Escobedo.
Other things Escobedo will have to wait on due to the number of work orders that the housing authority gets everyday.
With the number of conflicting viewpoints on this topic, it is hard to pinpoint who this problem is affecting.
This problem has caught the attention of the state government and U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, whose district responsibilities fall in Belle Glade. Hastings sent a letter to the USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue in October, informing him of the “news reports detailing the alarming experience of a family…whose health have been endangered, due to mold, rodents and cockroaches.”
Hastings asked to be updated on the timeline of the decision.
Since then, state Rep. Rick Roth-Palm Beach Gardens has asked the state Joint Legislative Auditing Committee to lead the auditor general, which is the state’s watchdog of government accountability, to investigate. All members of the committee supported the request.
This topic has been ongoing for years and is now getting the attention of media news due to the high call volume of people complaining about their various living conditions.
This past July, U.S. Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio sent a joint letter to the USDA Secretary in Washington, reiterating what Hastings and Roth have said since then.
With all the letters, news coverage, pictures, and complaints, there seems to be a good chance for the Okeechobee Center to get back on track. However, the state auditor may not begin investigating until early 2020.
“The Housing Authority needs to do better,” said Nathaniel Wells, 32, a resident of Okeechobee Center.
