Housing as a human right: Breaking ground on Placita Dolores Huerta
City of Coachella and CHOC set to dedicate new affordable housing construction to social justice icon Dolores Huerta
“Dolores Huerta’s decades of activism began with farmworkers but has extended to other communities. She remains a staunch advocate for the poor, women, families, the environment, LGBTQ citizens, and immigrants. In her lifetime, Dolores has been arrested 22 times in nonviolent protests. In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She is the founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, through which she continues to fight for social justice and equal rights, particularly within agricultural labor communities.” - Ortensia Lopez, CHOC Board Chair
Photos of Dolores Huerta Courtesy of NY Times, NPS, CNN, Houstonia Mag, and Harvard
“To see a little girl always bringing a heavy backpack with her, filled with stuff… and you ask her – why do you carry a backpack with all those things in there? And she says: ‘Because I don't know if I'm going to have a home to go home to.’”
As a national leader and advocate for affordable housing, Ortensia Lopez describes a scene all too familiar to families in California, along with the entirety of the United States –– young children who don’t have the security of stable housing.
Leading up to this Spring’s groundbreaking at the soon to be renamed Coachella Valley Apartments, Lopez speaks on the importance of bringing affordable housing to the working families of Coachella Valley and beyond.
“Stable housing is such a critical issue in children’s lives,” says Lopez. As the Chair of CHOC’s Board of Directors, Lopez has dedicated her career to improving the quality of life for traditionally marginalized communities.
Ortensia Lopez, Photo Courtesy of United Way Bay Area
This new construction will bring much-needed housing to the communities of the Desert. “California is the fifth-largest economy in the world,” says Lopez. “And yet when you throw in the issue of the housing crisis and liveable wages, we’re the most impoverished state in the country –– close to 30% of the population is in poverty.”
Currently, the Coachella Valley Apartments includes 50 apartments. Under the current redevelopment plan, those units will be rebuilt, while 60 new units are constructed.
“What pleases us is that it’s one thing to say we are for affordable housing, it’s another to get the funding necessary to make it happen,” says Coachella Mayor Steve Hernandez. In June of 2021, CHOC was awarded $22.6 million in California State Tax Credit financing to begin construction at the Coachella Valley Apartments.
“This award gets us closer to realizing our goal of constructing these much-needed units,” says Hernandez.
Coachella Valley Apartments Redevelopment Plan Renderings Courtesy of the Interactive Design Corporation
This new construction, as well as the overall property, will be renamed as Placita Dolores Huerta, in honor of Dolores Huerta, the American labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with César E. Chávez. The city of Coachella is home to majority Hispanic families, including immigrants and first-generation individuals.
Huerta, who is anticipated to be the guest of honor at a groundbreaking in April, is an iconic figure in California, across the Americas and around the world. “She's someone we can look up to, and have hope, have dreams,” says Lopez, adding, “I am so delighted that Dolores has given her blessing to the dedication of this affordable housing in her name. It’s a testament to her lifelong commitment to the farm worker and California’s rural communities. While the pandemic unveiled decades of inequities, Dolores has continued addressing racial, social, economic and environmental justice issues, for close to seventy years.”
Through decades of work fighting to improve the social and economic conditions for not only farmworkers but many other diverse communities, Huerta has made a specific, positive impact on the lives of immigrants, women, and children.
“When you see it done by someone Latino, someone that looks like you, or someone that has lived like you, it says, it's possible,” Lopez adds. “‘Sí, se puede,’ is the saying.”
Lopez herself has a long history of leading coalitions, collaboratives, and partnerships to bring positive change and social justice to disenfranchised communities. As the second of 11 children born to parents from Mexico, Lopez recalls her upbringing in California.
“I come from a family where service was front and center,” says Lopez, pausing, before sharing more details from her past that influenced her passion for advocacy.
As a young girl, she watched as her sister was rushed to the hospital after falling ill. “When they looked at her, they questioned her,” says Lopez. “And by that I mean, they thought she might have been under the influence of drugs and alcohol –– even though she never did that.”
Upon Lopez’s insistence, the doctors took further examinations and testing, resulting in a meningitis diagnosis. “The tragedy is, she went into a coma, and she never came out,” says Lopez.
Her brother, too, sadly lost his life through the inequities of the healthcare system. Suffering wounds as a victim of a drive-by shooting, he was taken to a private hospital, only to later be transferred two more times.
Without health insurance, her brother could only receive treatment at a general hospital. “But by that time, he had bled so much,” says Lopez, “that he didn’t make it.”
Tragedies from medical inequities like these, along with innumerable others, have contributed to Lopez’s commitment to the communities she serves – with housing as a centerpiece to her mission. “It shouldn't be a privilege to be treated, to have insurance,” she says.
Just as with health: “Housing should be a right, and not a privilege,” says Lopez.
About The Community Housing Opportunities Corporation (CHOC)
Founded in 1984, the Community Housing Opportunities Corporation (CHOC) is a non-profit, affordable housing developer based in Fairfield, California with offices in Palm Springs; we create and manage equitable communities for individuals, families, seniors, and those with special needs. CHOC believes that economically integrated affordable housing is key to self-sufficiency and is achievable with enriching, supportive programs that give pride to residents, stabilize families, and improve local economies. Visit CHOCHousing.org.
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