Latin American Housing Company Ltd

When I first arrived in Australia in 1988 with my family, it was very expensive to rent a house. And in the beginning none of us was working, but receiving a benefit from the Government. Out of that benefit we had to pay about 40% for rent and the rest for food and other expenses. Other hispanic migrants were in the same position, and we found out that it was difficult to find employment because "we had no local experience" even though some of us had worked with global multinationals.
Accustomed to working, a group of professionals decided to form a housing co-operative to get a place to live with a fair rent to pay. Fortunely, we met a gentleman from a coalition of co-operatives that offered us their offices and guidance so that we could start preparing all the documents to be presented to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission in order to incorporate our company. To make matters a little more interestinjg we decided to become the first ethnic housing co-operative in the the State of Queensland. All the documents were in Spanish.

This took about a year getting together and translating documents from English into Spanish and finding 25 spanish speaking families to become members, as at that time it was a requirement that 25 persons be incorporators and sometimes we had a hard time getting Spanish speaking migrants because there were few in the State of Queensland. Finally the documents were presented and with some adjustments it was incorporated in April 18, 1991. As soon as we incorporated the Federal Government had a remainder of funds for housing and it was given to us to buy 2 houses, and we were in business! After that, the Queensland Department of Housing called out tenders to grant funds to non-profit organizations like ours to buy more properties. Over the years we participated in various tenders and won a few which gave us the opportunity to buy 20 properties in total.

It has been 19 years since we have managed our company on a voluntary basis. No salaries paid. Families had their children grow-up, attended school, went through university and nowadays are professionals and earning very good income. Most of them left to buy their own homes and now we are in the process of consolating our company with six other co-operatives to form a larger organization to be called Jacaranda Housing with over 140 properties and assets worth over $42,000,000. And it all began with an idea, $200 and the determination of all our members to make a go of it in a new foreign country!

To take a look at our properties you can log on to www.geocities.com/lahousing



Jairo Cifuentes
Cofounder and Treasurer
Latin American Housing Company Ltd