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Benjamin Velasquez, Catering by Benjamin “Is the chef there?”
It’s Thursday morning, and a bilingual receptionist at the Carlos Rosario International School in Columbia Heights is on the phone trying to locate executive chef and LEDC client Benjamin Velasquez.
Walking the noisy halls in a chef’s top hat and a crisp, white apron, Benjamin immigrated to Silver Spring, Maryland 27 years ago. Having left his native El Salvador at the age of 19 to escape the perils of civil war, Benjamin’s first days in the United States mirrored those of many first-generation immigrants. His world, he remembers, had been turned “upside down.” Leaving behind his initial ambitions to become a lawyer, Benjamin was hired as a dishwasher in Washington, DC for his first job.
“When you are a dishwasher, you’re all wet, and you don’t know if you’re wet because you’re sweating or because of the water from the pots and pans,” Benjamin says.
After four years as a line cook, front line chef, and kitchen supervisor, Benjamin decided to enroll in a culinary arts school on the weekends while working two full-time jobs during the week. As he learned the art of European and Asian cooking from chefs at international embassies, his work at the Washington Hilton Hotel gave him the unique opportunity to help cook for six American heads of state. These difficult, but rewarding years allowed him to learn about the food of other cultures and develop his specialty – international and European cuisine.
When the Rosemount Center, a bilingual Head Start Center located in Mount Pleasant, offered him the opportunity to cook for their 150 students and 40 teachers as an independent contractor, Benjamin seized the opportunity to obtain the necessary regulatory documents and start his first job as a professional caterer. Shortly thereafter, Benjamin started his own personal catering business, Catering by Benjamin, after years of informal catering for church events in the community.
With the help of a microloan from LEDC in 2009, Benjamin successfully expanded his catering business into the greater DC Latino community. LEDC’s financial assistance helped Benjamin purchase a new cargo van that now helps him transport food from his kitchen space at the Rosemount Center to catering events around town.
“Now I can not only work in an enclosed facility, but I have the capacity to mobilize a whole kitchen from Place A to Place B,” Benjamin says. “[LEDC] always makes you feel welcome.”
While the economic crisis has hurt Benjamin like many others in the service industry, Benjamin is optimistic that the Latino community’s growing interest in professional catering services and the loyalty of his customers will help him during the slower months. In the meantime, as a teacher of 30 culinary art students every year at Carlos Rosario, Benjamin continues to enjoy teaching students in the DC metro area the art of cooking.
“It’s very rewarding when I see my students graduate because they are all immigrants,” Benjamin says. “This work really gives you a lot of satisfaction because you see them grow and work.” Lorena Amaya, Tenant Association President
 In 1996, newlywed Lorena Amaya moved into the Raymond Apartments in Columbia Heights with her husband. Familiar with the area given she had lived nearby for years, she recognized the challenges facing the neighborhood. Trading civil war in El Salvador in 1986 for pockets of gang violence and jarring loud music originating from a few floors above her new apartment, her home was neither the safest nor the most comfortable place to live.
Thirteen years later, while much of Columbia Heights has transformed, the conditions at the Raymond Apartments have hardly changed, Lorena says. Over the years, Lorena and her fellow tenants battled with their landlord to address poor building conditions, including roach and mice infestation, deficient plumbing, and air conditioning problems. The costs of these delayed repairs, Lorena remembers, were often passed down from the landlord to the tenants.
In December 2008, an unexpected turn of events left Lorena and her neighbors with much to gain and potentially everything to lose. Taken by surprise, they received a letter: "Your building is going to be sold, and as tenants in DC, the law says you have the right to first purchase." Although many tenants wanted to purchase the building, Lorena realized that they did not have the money to buy it. To make matters worse, the District of Columbia's Housing Production Trust Fund, a critical source of financing designed to help tenants purchase buildings, was low on funds.
Driven to improve conditions at the building, Lorena did a quick internet search of nonprofit organizations for help, eventually finding the Latino Economic Development Corporation (LEDC). Placing a call to one of LEDC's tenant organizers, Lorena took steps to organize a formal tenant association. Lorena attended monthly LEDC tenant leadership trainings, learning how to organize meetings, formally register the tenant association, and rally tenants together to collectively lobby for improvements. Months later, she was elected by her peers as tenant association president.
"I needed to do it because no one else was doing it and the building needed it badly," Lorena says. "Otherwise, we would have been at the mercy of the landlord."
The precarious financial situation facing the tenants also led Lorena to testify before DC's Committee on Housing and Workforce Development in March 2009. Nervous but self-assured, Lorena asked the committee to pursue new funding sources for the trust fund in support of tenant purchase.
"We as an association needed that money," Lorena says. "But we wanted to make sure that if it wasn't there for us, that other low-income families in the future would have that money available."
When an interested third party decided to purchase the building and work with the tenants, Lorena and the tenant association took part in the final negotiations. After negotiations concluded in April 2009, the new landlord agreed to limit rent increases for all current tenants to rent control; to meet on a quarterly basis with tenants to discuss building services; to fix all housing code violations; and to make a series of property improvements, including a new roof, new windows, and new security devices to improve the safety of the building.
"Since the tenant association was formed, we definitely know each other better," Lorena says. "The experience definitely brought us together."
Alexander Escobar, Homeowner
 Alexander's five-year-old daughter Zara is hungry. Sprinting upstairs from the basement to the kitchen, she clumsily climbs onto a chair beside Alexander and asks what there is to eat. As her eyes affix upon a small camera resting upright on the dining room table, she peers into the darkened lens, jostling her head from side-to-side.
The picture of Alexander's life at that moment - a new homeowner in the Brentwood neighborhood of Northeast DC - was the product of his long-standing desire for independence. Emigrating from Colombia to the United States in 1998 to study English, Alexander met his fair share of challenges. His plans to open a dental laboratory in Costa Rica after he finished learning English fell by the wayside. With the timely help of his new Jordanian boss and sponsor, Alexander remained in the United States and worked for five years at a small laboratory in Virginia.
During these years, Alexander's drive to start his own business led him to the doorsteps of the Latino Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) in 2001. Enrolling in LEDC's small business workshops, Alexander still imagined opening his own laboratory in the United States as he once had in his native Colombia. Before realizing his goal, life got in the way - Alexander married, and his daughter Zara was born.
The afterglow of starting his new family in Maryland faded in 2006, when Alexander separated from his wife. Moving into an efficiency in Northwest DC, Alexander saw Zara every other weekend. Their time together - often frustrated by the challenges of little space, loud noise, and rashes of cockroaches and bed bugs - convinced Alexander that Zara deserved more.
"I wanted a house because I lived in a space the size of what is now my living room," Alexander recalls. "My daughter was growing up, the area was filling with toys, and before I knew it, there was no space left."
Determined to provide a better living environment for his daughter, Alexander contacted LEDC's Homeownership Program. Signing up for LEDC's pre-purchase homeownership counseling, Alexander spent hours on multiple weekends learning how to manage debt, the costs and responsibilities of maintaining a home, and how to apply for a no-interest loan through the DC Department of Housing and Community Development's Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP).
Shortly thereafter, Alexander began the arduous task of finding a home. Enduring a series of frustrating disappointments - lost investments after failed housing inspections, city funding droughts that left him temporarily without money to apply for a private loan, and expired private loans that needed to be reapplied for - Alexander remembers looking at almost 20 houses during his busy weekends spent juggling both Zara and Zara's future.
Now, feelings of frustration have transformed into feelings of joy, as he watches Zara play with her cousin in their new home.
"It is very gratifying," Alexander says. "I feel happy to see my daughter run, to have her own space, to have her own room and room for her toys, to know that we aren't living in boxes.
"This is the moment to enjoy this house, to enjoy the space with my daughter and my family," Alexander says.
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