14846: hermantin: Haitian immigrants finding American Dream in Palm Beach County suburbs (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Haitian immigrants finding American Dream in Palm Beach County suburbs
By Prashant Gopal
Staff Writer

February 17, 2003

The place was too small to accommodate them, but Francois Jean Louis had his
wife and children in mind when he moved into a one-room apartment in east
Delray Beach 16 years ago.

For 11 years, Jean Louis bought rice, beans, sugar and other wholesale
groceries, which he shipped to his wife, Agath, in Gonave, Haiti. She sold
them and saved the profits.

By 1998, they had enough -- $4,000 -- for a down payment on a two-bedroom
house on the western edge of Delray Beach. Jean Louis, Agath and their four
children moved into the 25-year-old Rainberry Woods subdivision.

Often working more than one job, Haitian tree-trimmers, taxi drivers,
housekeepers and mechanics are moving out of urban neighborhoods and into
Palm Beach County suburbs. While most have rented at first, many are taking
advantage of the benefits of owning their homes.

The trend has been dramatic in a few pockets of affordable housing. In
Rainberry Woods, a community of duplexes on Lake Ida Road and Military
Trail, homes sold for as little as $65,000 in the mid 1990s -- at least 30
percent less than homes in eastern Delray Beach.

As a result, Palm Beach County, whose immigrant population usually is
dwarfed by those of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, now is home to some of
the fastest-growing Haitian communities in South Florida, according to the
2000 census.

The Haitian population grew from 22 in 1990 to 800 in 2000 in the census
tract that includes the Rainberry Woods, Delray Shores and Chatelaine
neighborhoods. One in every five people there is of Haitian ancestry. The
Haitian population grew faster in this census tract than in any other in
South Florida.

Haitians also have purchased homes in Boynton Beach, especially in a
neighborhood of single-family houses east of Interstate 95 and south of
Boynton Beach Boulevard that some real estate agents call Bowers Park. The
Haitian population there rose from 116 to 806 during the 1990s.

"We are observing a process of gentrification," said Joseph Bernadel, a
Haitian community leader and principal of the Toussaint L'Ouverture High
School for Arts and Social Justice in downtown Delray Beach. "People are
coming back to the downtown, buying land, and it's causing the costs to
rise."

For more than 20 years, Haitian populations have been concentrated in poorer
neighborhoods such as Osceola Park, which extends from Federal Highway to
Swinton Avenue and from Southeast Second Street to 10th Street in downtown
Delray Beach. The number of Haitians in the census tract that includes
Osceola Park rose from 543 to 796 between 1990 and 2000, a far smaller
increase than in the Rainberry Woods area.

As rents started to rise in the 1990s, Haitian immigrants began leaving
urban communities in search of more space and better schools. Many still
rent one- and two-bedroom houses in Delray Beach, but redevelopment has
driven up property values in the east and made first-time home ownership in
the western suburbs more appealing.

"They're looking for better neighborhoods that are also affordable," said
real estate agent Jean Raymond, who primarily works with Haitian clients.
"They want what everybody else wants: better neighborhoods and better
education for their kids."

Many Haitian families who bought houses in Rainberry Woods and other
middle-income neighborhoods in the 1990s arrived in the United States during
the first wave of immigration in the late 1970s.

"Haitians typically believe in ownership," said Rene D. Ameris, of Ameris
First Mortgage in Delray Beach. "But they have a hard time understanding
mortgages. Back home, they don't have banks finance stuff. Somebody buys a
piece of land, gets an engineer to do the plans, buys the concrete blocks
and starts building."

Over the past decade, Haitian real estate agents and mortgage brokers have
helped educate Haitians about how to buy homes in America. Many share
knowledge through community meetings and paid advertisements and programs
broadcast on Creole radio station WHSR-AM 980 in Boca Raton.

In addition to a tradition of home ownership, Haitians bring with them a
strong work ethic and devotion to family. Large families often share houses,
dividing housework and bills. In the case of the Jean Louis family, Agath, a
housekeeper, contributed the down payment for the house and pays the grocery
bills; her husband, who works in landscaping, pays the mortgage; and their
eldest son, Gracia, 19, pays the water and cable bills.

Sometimes families pool savings. Andre Pierre, 42, a swimming pool
attendant, shares a four-bedroom house in Rainberry Woods with his wife and
four cousins. Two years ago, he was able to put down $7,000 on the $95,000
house with the help of an informal communal savings program. Participants
pool their savings and take turns using the money.

"Members of other communities don't understand how they are able to do it,"
Ameris said of Haitian homebuyers. "When a manager of a restaurant, who
doesn't own a home, sees the dishwasher is buying a house, it freaks him
out."

Pragmatism, not pride, drives some working-class Haitians to homeownership.
Landlords, neighbors and city code enforcers aren't willing to put up with
large groups of people living in the same house, Bernadel said.

Before moving to Rainberry Woods in the early 1990s, Berry Blanc, 23, said
he lived with nine relatives in a two-bedroom house in Osceola Park. Now
they own a five-room home in a duplex.

"There were too many people for that two-room house," Blanc said. "This
place is cheap. You get more for your money."

But Rainberry Woods offered more than space.

"Life over there [in east Delray Beach] is different," said Billy Antoine,
19, a Palm Beach County Community College student whose family moved from
Osceola Park to Rainberry Woods seven years ago. "It's more quiet. You can
start a life here."

Still, Antoine and other Rainberry Woods residents say the neighborhood is
becoming more like the cities they left. They complain about littering and
about young people gathering outside late at night and playing loud music.
They dream of moving into wealthy suburban developments west of Boca Raton,
West Palm Beach and Wellington, where many Haitian professionals are buying
homes.

Rainberry Road resident Presner Jean Pierre said Haitians are seeing their
hard work pay off.

In his first two years in the United States, Jean Pierre saved $10,000 by
working two jobs, as a taxi driver and in the kitchen of a restaurant. Two
years ago, he put the money down on a $76,000, two-bedroom house.

"It's not easy to buy a house," he said. "The fact that so many Haitians are
buying homes shows they're working and they're stable.

"For me, it's good to know that as long as I can work, this house is mine."

Staff Photographer Carline Jean and Staff Researcher John Maines contributed
to this report.

Prashant Gopal can be reached at pgopal@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6602
Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel





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