Talent -                 more than $73 million dollars was awarded to wildfire-affected counties across the state. Helping rebuild affordable homes for families and people in Talent.

Seven million of those funds will go towards affordable housing to convert the Talent Mobile Estates into a resident-owned neighborhood. CASA of Oregon has been able to jumpstart this project with the help of the local non-profit Coalición Fortaleza.

These groups have been working to bring back the residents of this neighborhood after being displaced from the 2020 Almeda fire. The idea to buy the land and have the neighborhood be resident-owned came from a previous resident.

“The past 20 months we’ve been exploring this idea of what would it look like to purchase land and bring back families to Talent or to Phoenix,” says Érica Ledesma, Executive Director of Coalición Fortaleza.

She says that now that CASA has been successful in purchasing Talent Mobile Estates “this is not just any idea anymore, this is actually happening,” says Ledesma.

A major factor that has gone into the rebuilding of Talent Mobile Estates is letting the residents have control in the rebuilding and redesigning process.

CASA Director of Manufactured Housing and Cooperative Development Rose Ojeda says this should be a fun and exciting process that involves future residents. They should be the ones mapping out where their community center should be or where they want their green spaces located.

“This is their housing this is there going to be their community they should have a say in how we end up designing both the site plan and also the units,” says Ojeda.

Community engagement has played an important role in the project. Volunteers have made phone calls to the displaced families, they’ve hosted cultural gatherings and provided food to gain that sense of community.

A good portion of the residents are part of the Latino community, this project wants to highlight these people’s voices and represent their culture.

“Essentiality what we’re having them do is taking them through this exercise of envisioning what their community would look like if they were the designers creating their own community,” says Ojeda.

Ojeda says after the residents and non-profits are set on a layout the units should be ready to be installed next year. They want to focus on their goals of land, culture, community, and legacy.

To visit Coalición Fortaleza’s website click here to read more about their work in the community.

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Camryn joined NewsWatch 12 as a reporter/producer at the end of January, 2022.

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