New York Times, January 24, 1967
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - One sunny Saturday morning recently, a cloud of 200 squatters carrying household goods and old lumber descended on the Los Prados housing project on the flat outskirts of this capital.
Within a half-hour, the ragged men, women and children had marked out family areas with stakes and ropes in a vacant field next to the middle-income development and were setting up light housekeeping. The field used to belong to the Trujillo family.
In another hour, James R. Miller, a bulky, taciturn engineer from Columbus, Ohio, who manages the development, had everything straightened out, and the squatters were straggling along the highway looking for another home.
Thus was another crisis passed in the $6.4-million development, which has come through seven changes of government and one revolution since its inception in June, 1962. "Sure, you get some unusual things doing business down here," Mr. Miller says, "but that's the way business is done. What the hell, I've been through more revolutions than most people have heard about."
The Los Prados project is unique in the Dominican Republic. With American and Dominican capital. 4.6 million in mortgage money from the Chase Manhattan Bank guaranteed by the Alliance for Progress, and years of hard work, the development has taken shape, and now it is one of the few outlets for the aspirations of the slowly emerging middle class.
More than 200 three-bedroom homes in the $9,000 to $11,000 class are finished, and 300 more are scheduled for completion by the end of this year. The rows of well kept-up houses carpet a field where children play among the palm trees and is all but indistinguishable from a development in Lake Worth, Fla., or Phoenix, Ariz.
The Investment and Developent Company (COINFO), the spoonsoring concern, began as a private enterprise. Mr. Miller, a 40-year-old graduate of Ohio State University who has worked as a builder and housing consultant in many countries, put up some money, as did the architectural firm of Tibbals, Crumley & Musson in Colombus. In all, about $1-million in private capital has been raised - 60 per cent from American and 40 per cent from Dominican sources.
What makes the project unique is the mortgage money provided through the Chase Manhattan and the Allice for Progress -- the United States aid program n Latin America. Under the mortgage financing, a home buyer gets a 20-year contract at an 8 per cent net interest rate after making a 15 per cent down payment. The average income of the home-buying families is $5,000 a year. There is a $4,000 minimum to be eligible.
Long - term mortgages are rare in the Dominican Republic, and when they are available the net interest rate ranges between 12 and 20 per cent.
