The Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance (IFHA) announced today that it has received a $200,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Collier County to assist with the construction of their Immokalee affordable housing community.

Dr. Arol Buntzman, Chairperson and Board President of the Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance speaks with Peter Buffett, Co-President of the Novo Foundation.

The NoVo Foundation, founded in 2010 by Jennifer and Peter Buffett, has made a pledge of $1 million in support of the Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance’s project to build affordable housing in Immokalee.

The Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance (IFHA) IFHA.info has been awarded a $15,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Collier County to assist with planning and fund development for the construction of their Immokalee affordable housing community.

The Presbyterian Church USA announced a grant late 2020 of $250,000 from their Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) program to the Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance (IFHA). PDA representative Melana Scruggs lauded the program, which will replace dilapidated and over-priced trailers and shacks with hurricane resistant, affordable two and three bedroom apartments on a ten acre lot on Lake Trafford Road. A fundraising campaign to build out the community is underway.

The non-profit Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance (IFHA) recently received a check for $50,000 from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis, Indiana. Disciples of Christ representative Caroline Hamilton-Arnold said that IFHA’s 128 unit rental community in Immokalee will serve farmworker families now living in substandard and overpriced trailers.

Habitat for Humanity of Collier County, Rural Neighborhoods and Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance (IFHA) have teamed up to work on making safe, decent, affordable housing opportunities available to as many Immokalee residents as possible.

On Monday, the Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance, which is planning the development, received a $2,500 grant from the Community Foundation of Collier County to help the idea become a reality. It joins nine other organizations, and more than 100 individual donors, in supporting the project.

Florida will be the epicenter of the next wave of COVID-19.

That’s the warning scientists and medical professionals are sending out. And it’s looking as if Southwest Florida, including Collier, Lee and especially Hendry counties are among the few counties responsible for that designation.

The agricultural community of Immokalee is quickly becoming an epicenter of coronavirus cases in Florida, with the state health department’s dashboard showing a large cluster of cases with nearly 900 recorded since April. And as workers move north to work the summer fields in other parts of the country, advocacy groups worry they will take the virus with them.

The Florida ZIP code with the greatest number of COVID-19 infections isn’t in Miami-Dade County. Or Broward. Or Palm Beach.

Nestled inland in Collier County, the rural Immokalee community has now seen 1,207 infections, all in the 34142 ZIP code region.

Florida Department of Health geographic data shows troubling signs for a community best known as home to migrant farm workers.

The Shimberg Center for Housing Studies was established at the University of Florida in 1988 to promote safe, decent and affordable housing and related community development throughout the state of Florida.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has completed the handover of its COVID-19 testing and public health program for farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida, to the county health department and local organizations.