Thread: Good News, Illegal immigrants lose state housing

http://www.telluridegateway.com/article ... s01.txNews

Friday, January 26, 2007


Illegal immigrants lose state housing
By Pat Healy
Published: Thursday, January 25, 2007 8:24 PM CST


Margarita sighs and glances around the home she’ll soon be leaving.

There’s the tiny Christmas tree, still perched by the window. Over there are the toys her kids should have put away before going to bed. On the kitchen counter, bamboo shoots and dishes wait to be washed. She doesn’t want to move away from this jumbled place, but she knows she has to.

Because this is now the law: Anyone like Margarita who lives in state-funded housing must show identification to their landlord and sign a paper that says they’ve come legally to the country. Like scores of immigrants in Telluride and across Colorado, Margarita crossed illegally and has no papers. So when her lease at the Village Court Apartments expires next month, she and her family are out.




More Tophomes

“We’re moving to Norwood,” Margarita said in Spanish. “It’s going to be a drastic change, but we don’t have any other alternative. I don’t have the slightest hope of staying.”

So it goes at apartment complexes in Mountain Village and Telluride, where illegal immigrants — many from Mexico and Central America — live in subsidized or government-built homes or receive state aid to help pay the rent.

Now, as leases come due, these renters are rushing to file paperwork seeking a visa or green card.



They’re hoping someone with legal papers can move in and thus renew the lease. They’re living in church basements until they can find a viable spot to live.

Or, they’re simply packing up and moving to Ridgway, Montrose or beyond, where rents are cheaper and the private landlords don’t have to check IDs like bar bouncers.

Managers at Telluride Apartments and Shandoka Apartments said they didn’t know how many families would be touched by the reach of these new laws, which went into effect Aug. 1. They said they could not say whether families were leaving because they had no papers, or because they just wanted a new home.



But Shirley Greve, executive director of the San Miguel Regional Housing Authority, said immigrants may not feel the law’s brunt until the spring, when many leases come up for renewal.

Before leaving office, Gov. Bill Owens signed a package of laws aimed at denying illegal immigrants state aid and contracts. Owens had said that 50,000 illegal immigrants were receiving state aid, and the new laws require anyone seeking aid to provide a valid driver’s license, state ID card or other proof of legal residence.

Anyone hoping to buy or rent a deed-restricted property — another type of government-funded affordable housing — must also show identification.



A flood of people have applied for Colorado ID cards since the laws were signed six months ago, but state officials said they have no statistics on the number of people who have lost aid or have changed houses due to the law.

Still, one business owner in Telluride said the new laws have choked off his business. Sam Leyva and his family recently shuttered their Mexican grocery store on main street, saying that Hispanic families had been leaving Telluride apartments because they had no immigration papers.

“We asked what was going on, and we heard a lot of people were moving to Montrose,” Leyva said.



Take Esperanza Rivera and Eden Mireles, transplants from Telluride to Placerville.

A live-in maid, Rivera moved with an American family from California to Telluride but quit in August after her senora began screaming and insulting Rivera. Rivera left the house, but had nowhere to go. Some landlords asked for identification, others for three months’ rent in advance.

“I couldn’t find an apartment because I don’t have papers,” she said. “I have a tourist visa, but I’m illegal because I’m working.”



Rivera found refuge in a church basement, where she met Mireles, a 21-year-old in the same situation. Mireles said he’d been living with his sister in the 134-apartment Shandoka complex, but when she couldn’t furnish ID, they both lost the apartment.

With help from some friends, Mireles and Rivera said they found a cheap apartment in Placerville, privately owned, where the landlord only asked one question: When do you want to come?

“Hoy dia,” Rivera said she told the landlord. Today.



Others are still in the lurch.

A grandmother from Mexico living at the Village Court apartments said that if she can’t stay in her $920 two-bedroom, she’ll leave the area altogether. She won’t return to Mexico or Arizona, where she lived before. California, maybe, but she worries that the grandson she raises will turn bad around gangs and big cities.

She has filed paperwork to get U.S. residence, but the lease expires on Feb. 28, and the government does not move swiftly.



“I work today to eat tomorrow,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified, saying she worried about the consequences for her children. “I don’t have a car. How am I going to move? I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Daniel Molina, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, said he’ll move even farther when his lease at Shandoka expires May 4. Molina said his fake green card is worthless to extend his lease, since landlords and governments are verifying document numbers against federal databases.

“Some are going to change apartments and move to Montrose,” he said of the 15 companeros who crossed with him a year ago. “But if I go to Montrose, I have to get a ride or a car, and pay every day. The work is in Telluride.”



So Molina said he has decided. This spring, he’s returning to Mexico.

t -

And the tide slowly turns.

I does seem like the tide is turning a bit... but for how long? This amnesty / guest slave legislation is going to be USHERED through, you can be sure.

No illegal should never have had state housing or assistance. How has America gotten into this problem? Maybe by not giving illegals any benefits the money that is being sent out of America will slow. The illegals will need to spend the money here to live instead of Americans supporting them.

Hell look out Montrose here they come. If your having it so rough get back to where you came from!!!! I love the way the article trys to pull on the heart strings. Well my strings broke many many illegals ago!!!

“I don’t have a car. How am I going to move? I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Turn yourself in to the nearest ICE office.

Originally Posted by edstate

I does seem like the tide is turning a bit... but for how long? This amnesty / guest slave legislation is going to be USHERED through, you can be sure.

No, ED.........it won't as long as you and I and every other person who's fighting this fight stays their ground.
That's the only way a battle is won.

"They’re hoping someone with legal papers can move in and thus renew the lease."

They pay someone who has papers to sign the lease.

Yet there are still displaced Americans living in government trailers because there is no subsidized housing available. This is not just a local problem.