Altagrace Deshommes immigrated to Miami from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 14 years ago searching for a better life for her and her daughter. When she arrived, she spoke little English and did not realize she was entitled to pursue the “American dream” of home ownership.

In 2000, pastor Jacques Saint-Louis, Little Haiti Housing Association’s housing director, conducted a weekly Haitian radio program that ran for a seven-month period that year. The program covered various housing issues pertaining to Haitian immigrants in and around the Little Haiti area. Among the topics Saint Louis discussed were the benefits of Little Haiti Housing Association, a non-profit organization founded in 1987, intended to help Haitians in the Miami area purchase a home. Saint-Louis informed the listeners of the types of housing available in Little Haiti and spoke about the house-shopping process.

“I heard about it [Little Haiti Housing Association] on the radio, and I qualified for the program and I buy the house,” Deshommes said. “Jacques spoke Creole, and he help me a lot to buy the house.”

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When she first contacted Saint-Louis, he said she tried not to seem like she needed help, but he could see that she did.

“Altagrace needed the program,” he said.  “She was working two jobs and trying to take a daughter to school. Now she is so grateful about what she got here.”

He said Deshommes has told other people about the program and at least one family has purchased a house because of her recommendation.

Carl Juste, a photojournalist at the Miami Herald who emigrated from Haiti to New York and finally to Miami when he was a child, said Haitians had to face constant struggles since the first wave of immigrants arrived in the early 1980s.   Unlike the Cubans, who were supported by the United States government on a political front, Haitians were extremely unwelcome when they arrived in Miami, Juste said.

“Just recently, Haitians have stopped becoming the black sheep, literally,” he said.

Gepsie Metellus, founder and director of Sant La Haitian Community Center, agrees.
“The pride I feel now as a Haitian American was not the same for young people in the 80s and 90s,” she said.  “Being Haitian, simply being Haitian, until about 10 years ago, you were considered to be at a high risk for AIDS.”

This stigma, according to active members in the Haitian-American community like Juste and Metellus, is just now being lifted, giving Haitians more opportunities such as the ability to own a home.

Little Haiti Housing Association’s focus is to support Haitians primarily in the Little Haiti area, said Samuel Diller, executive director of LHHA.

Along with immigration and health, affordable housing is one of the most prevalent issues Haitians face when they move to the United States.

“Housing constitutes 33 percent of most of their income,” Metellus said. “That’s a big number if you only make $14,000 dollars a year.”

Single-family homes in Little Haiti constitute 75 percent of the housing stock, but many of those homes have been illegally subdivided into as many as four apartments, Diller said. The illegally converted units rent for roughly $400 to $500 monthly. Code violations abound, and code enforcement is nearly nonexistent.

A family of six, who asked to remain anonymous to conceal the decision to purchase a home through a housing program, is living in a dilapidated trailer off of NE 2nd Ave. in Little Haiti.  The family is paying more for the rent of the trailer than it would cost to purchase the home through Little Haiti Housing Association.

Saint-Louis, referred to as “Pastor Jacques” by most of his clients, said many Haitians are ashamed to ask for help.  He clearly remembers a woman who moved from Haiti, qualified for the program, purchased a home through with LHHA but did not tell her close siblings.

“Her sister came from Haiti a few years later to live with her, and she did not even tell her own sister she used a program to buy her home,” Saint-Louis said.  “She wanted her family to think she did it alone-with her own money.”

After financial issues have been resolved, qualifying families for home ownership then participate in LHHA’s Home Ownership Training Program, consisting of nine-hour classes taught in Haitian Creole about subsidized financing and other important information about homeownership.

Diller said families or individuals must graduate from this program before they can purchase a home. Since 2007, there has been a zero percent default rate on program graduates.

A recently established post-purchase program run by LHHA is the Homeowners’ Club. This offers new homeowners an opportunity to meet for social and educational activities in a clubhouse and to work together for positive change in their community. Membership is open to anyone who has purchased a home through LHHA.

“The club is probably the best part about LHHA,” Diller said. “Someone can come in with a bank statement they cannot read or understand, and we will help them.”