San Miguel de Allende expats Build houses for the neediest, $1,200 for a 12x14-foot home

Most U.S. citizens who retire to Mexico become involved in one of the thousands of projects to help their adopted country. One of the newest programs that shows immediate rewards in the lives of the poorest of Mexican families is Casita Linda, which so far has built ten sturdy, safe homes for those who were living in shacks and ruins, their previous "roof" often only a tarp or piece of corrugated plastic.

About 47% of Mexicans live below the country's poverty level that is equivalent to $4 U.S. a day. The Mexican minimum wage is about $5 U.S. a day. About 10% live in dire poverty, on less than $1 U.S. a day, $365 U.S.

total income a year. These are the families who are rarely seen from the modern freeways taking tourists to lush beach resorts or historic colonial cities.

San Miguel de Allende is one of those beautiful historic towns on the central plateau of Mexico, 165 miles northwest of Mexico City. Its urban population is about 80,000--including 11-12,000 foreigners, 70% of whom are from the United States (20% are from Canada and 10% are from 31 other countries).

San Miguel has a reputation as being one of the most expensive Mexican cities and a long-time attraction for U.S. expatriates. Expats first started coming to SMA after World War II when returning soldiers found they could live well in Mexico on their G.I. Bill while studying art and Spanish at the Instituto Allende. It became known as a hangout for the beat generation. It has been called, both affectionately and derogatorily, the Santa Fe of Mexico.

It is still a draw for artists, writers, photographers and others who have found it a retirement haven. Hotels, restaurants, shops and services catering to the expat community have put San Miguel on many travel magazines' lists of top ten spots in the world to retire.

But it is the other 60,000 Mexicans who live in the 540 rural villages that are under the umbrella of San Miguel de Allende, who do not directly reap the benefit of tourist and retiree dollars, who are the subect of many expat outreach programs.

One program, Feed the Hungry, provides a substantial hot meal every day for hundreds of school children. Another provides meals for the elderly. Other organizations provide medical and dental services and costly operations for SMA children, while hundreds more children each year attend colleges on scholarships from expat-supported programs, and other groups bring computers into rural schools.

Add to this list Casita Linda, which has developed a system to provide a 12x14-foot house for a family of two for only $1,200 U.S., and a 12x20-foot house for a larger family for only $1,700. So far eight new homes have been built and turned over to their new owners, and several other homes with walls that could be saved have been remodeled.

Casita Linda now hopes to build a dozen new homes a year with its system of poured in place walls and roofs. The volunteer builders have developed reusable forms for the mixture of concrete, inorganic dirt and the additive maxeh, a combination that makes the finished structure more insulating, environmentally friendly, and cost effective than other construction methods.

Each house has windows, a door and lock, a kitchen with a sink, and a water collection system on the roof that makes it possible for its residents to have a warm shower in the afternoons. Casita Linda volunteers go into the poorest communities and work with the residents who select the recipients of each new house. The community as well as the expat volunteers work on the construction of each home.

Casita Linda volunteers hope that their method of providing very low cost sturdy homes for the poorest families will be adopted by other groups so that more and more homes can be built. They need not only workers, with or without any construction experience, to actually build the homes, but also volunteers to help with grant writing, outreach to other organizations, assistance in determining and organizing communities who need help, materials procurement, and of course donations.

To see photos and read the stories of some of the families who have received the new homes, and for information on how to volunteer time and money, and possibly bring this concept to other communities, go to www.casitalinda.org.

For more information on retiring to Mexico, read Falling...in Love with San

Miguel: Retiring to Mexico on Social Security, by Carol Schmidt and Norma Hair, who moved to San Miguel in 2002.