Puerto Ricans in Loíza Face Homelessness After Being Told They Could Stay

Doña María has lived in her Hacienda Grande home, also known as Villa Vaca in Loíza, for 62 years. It is the only home she has ever known. It is also where her grandfather lived. Five years ago, she and her neighbors were told they could remain in their homes forever. This October, that promise may be broken, leaving the people of Villa Vaca on the street with nowhere to go.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Doña María and several of her neighbors. Their stories are heartbreaking. They live in constant fear of being forced out of the homes where four generations of Puerto Ricans have lived. The reason: an environmentally destructive luxury project that could increase flooding risk and, most importantly, displace an entire community.

This is happening in the shadow of Act 22, the tax-break regime that has allowed wealthy outsiders, including Illinois-based Dr. Yan Katsnelson of Ora World, to move to Puerto Rico and enjoy extraordinary tax benefits while communities like Villa Vaca face displacement.

How did this happen? The people of Villa Vaca were told to pay $1 a month and sign a contract. They were verbally assured they would never be thrown out of their homes. Then the property was sold. The new owners have not even shown their faces to the community, nor have they offered compensation to families who have lived there since 1965.

It should also surprise no one that Loíza is a predominantly Afro-Boricua community that has faced discrimination since the days of Spanish colonization.

Thankfully, Mayor Julia Nazario is helping. She has organized volunteer legal assistance and brought diaspora groups, including Chicago’s Puerto Rican Cultural Center, which I advise in Washington, D.C., as well as media personalities, to help rally support for the community.

Unfortunately, Mayor Nazario has no authority over the permits for these projects in her town. She also will not receive meaningful revenue from the development because of Puerto Rico’s tax giveaway system. In fact, she told us that even if her municipality were eligible for tax revenue, she would reject the project because the lives of Villa Vaca residents matter more.

So what is Act 22? It is a Puerto Rican law that exploits a federal tax loophole and gives outsiders zero percent tax rates on certain capital gains, dividends, interest, and other forms of investment income, along with additional benefits not available to most Puerto Rican residents.

At the same time, the Puerto Rican diaspora is increasingly angry about the Act 22 loophole because cities, states, and the federal government are being deprived of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue. The result is a circular pattern of gentrification and displacement that affects Puerto Rican communities from Loíza to Humboldt Park and back again.

“We are not animals. People live here, and we are not going anywhere,” Miguel Luis Franco Figueroa told me.

Nalian Díaz, a mother of two babies, told me she has nowhere to go. She fears that one day she will return home and find her house reduced to rubble or boarded up with an eviction notice on the door.

The validity of verbal agreements, property titles, tax laws, territorial permits, and other technicalities will all be used to justify this inhumanity. The language of “progress” will be aimed at the very people who, in the eyes of developers and investors, stand in the way of jobs, growth, and trickle-down economics.

But this is not a routine case of poor families being priced out of their homes because they can no longer afford rising costs. Residents of Villa Vaca, including Doña María, have little or no income and literally no other housing alternatives.

That is why those of us in the diaspora have a responsibility to raise our voices and support Villa Vaca. We have a duty to act, including by boycotting the clinics Dr. Katsnelson operates across 30 states, so that abusive tax beneficiaries understand there will be economic consequences if they continue to threaten the lives of the 16 families in Hacienda Grande.

If the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States and our allies do not stand up for Doña María and her neighbors, we will be next.

Federico A. de Jesús is Principal of FDJ Solutions and previously served as Communications Director for Hispanic Media for Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama. De Jesús is also the former Deputy Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration.

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