Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
An influx of immigrants has helped transform a Tampa public housing complex once known for crime into a place reminiscent of home.
By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 29, 2001
TAMPA -- Bich Nguyen adjusted her conical hat, slipped into oversized rubber boots and grabbed her ribbed metal can.
The 71-year-old woman wore black pants and a long-sleeved silk blouse despite the heat and humidity. She walked to the edge of the ditch, filled her can with muddy water and proceeded to irrigate her vegetable garden, one canful at a time.
She gave life to her green beans, water spinach and Vietnamese lettuce. She moistened the soil around her Vietnamese mint, coriander and saw leaf.
And she carefully worked her way around her bitter melons, their vines wrapped around beams of wood that had been nailed together to make a trellis.
Nguyen's lush plot, about the length of a grocery store aisle, produces vegetables for dinner each night. But it serves another purpose.
"It reminds me of my homeland," Nguyen said as she swatted at a mosquito near her cheek.
Indeed, had it not been for the bullet-riddled buildings to her right and the choking stench of rotten milk in the air, she could have been in her native Vietnam.
But Nguyen lives in the projects.
At the Rembrandt Garden Apartments, a public housing complex south of Gandy Boulevard, 60 percent of the tenants are Vietnamese immigrants. They have moved in slowly over five years, contributing to change with each new resident.
From the smell of fish sauce at dinner time to the sound of Vietnamese music blaring from open windows, they've transformed this complex near Robinson High School into a Vietnamese village.
That has had a profound effect on the complex and the neighborhood. Crime is still a problem, but not like it once was. And most Vietnamese don't stay long. Of the more than 50 families who lived at Rembrandt in 1996, about 20 have moved. They are replaced by other Vietnamese, who have heard about this little oasis.
"It's like their own little city away from home," said Cynthia Williams of the Tampa Housing Authority. "They feel at home there."
About 130 families live in this two-story, 156-unit complex, which is divided into two sections. Most of the Vietnamese live in one; many Hispanics and African-Americans, who are about equal in number, live in the other.
The buildings look more like a cheap motel, with railings running across the upper floors, doors spaced equally apart. The pale aqua paint on the walls has faded, and 38 units are boarded up, awaiting repair. There's more dirt than green grass.
Brightening the outside of a few apartments are brilliant pink roses in full bloom. A Vietnamese man with a cigarette hanging from his lips pulls shirts from a clothesline. A Vietnamese woman in floral-print pajamas carries fresh herbs into her apartment, leaving her sandals at the door.
Vietnamese, Hispanic and black children play in the dirt. A man works on his car. Neighbors chat.
It is a refreshing scene to Tampa police Cpl. Michael Niemi, who has patrolled here for 15 years.
"Drugs were rampant throughout the entire section. We were always called -- assaults against people, stabbings and a whole lot of drugs," Niemi said. "The crime rate has dropped unbelievably much. It's completely changed ..."
Now, police are seldom called at night.
Police officers used to chase drug dealers through the projects, often outside the windows of the Boys & Girls Club in the complex, recalled Melvin Forman, director of the club.
"There were drug dealers on every corner," said Forman, who started working at the Rembrandt building as games planner in 1991. "Everyone knew Rembrandt was a bad place to live, a bad place to send your kids."
The area has come a long way, he said.
"The Vietnamese are friendly people. If you do something for them, then they go out of their way for you. It's been great," Forman said.
The first big wave of Vietnamese moved in in 1995, according to tenants. In four years, overall crime dropped almost 20 percent, records show.
Resident Gabrielle Viera said he now can leave his wallet in his unlocked car. "Five years ago, it was very, very bad," he said. The Vietnamese, he adds, "have turned this place around."
Rembrandt opened in 1970, when Alfred Larcom was a teenager. Since 1963, three generations of Larcoms have run Larcom's Garage about a mile south of the complex. He recalls the anger among neighbors when the project was announced.
"There was a lot of resistance," said Larcom, 47. "People did not want it there."
It went up anyway, and within a few years police were there several times a day, Larcom said.
Faye Pate moved her family into a house across the street from Rembrandt in 1976 so the kids could walk home for lunch from Robinson High.
A few years later, they thought of moving. Gunshots rang out at night, and bullets flew through her house.
"At our age, it was hard to relocate," said Mrs. Pate, 67. "We didn't want to uproot. We wished they would tear it down."
Things started to change in 1995.
An influx of Vietnamese came to America through the Humanitarian Order, which granted visas to former South Vietnamese military officers, who had been detained in re-education camps, and their families.
They settled in Florida because of the climate's similarity to Vietnam's. They chose Rembrandt because of its proximity to Old Tampa Bay. From the Gandy Bridge, they could catch fish for dinner like they did in Vietnam, said property manager Shawonnia Davenport.
Most come to America penniless, but with dreams of owning a house, said Van Tu Pham, who moved to Rembrandt in 1996 from Vietnam.
Free fish and vegetables, combined with low rent, make it easier to build up the bank account.
"Living here is affordable," he said. "They save up for houses, then they move away."
Housing authority officials try to accommodate the preferences of tenants, said Cynthia Williams, who places applicants. Vietnamese immigrants often ask about Rembrandt, she said.
"A lot of them don't speak English," she said. "Any time you go somewhere unfamiliar, you want to find some type of family environment."
Butch Williams, 58, has happily lived at Rembrandt for 22 years -- longer than any other tenant.
"Everywhere you go, you will find the same things. But as far as I'm concerned, they have more problems in other projects," he said. "(Rembrandt) has gone through a lot of changes. I prefer to live here than the rest."
On a typical weekday, the complex is quiet. Many people are at work. When the children come home from school, they throw on skates and take out rubber balls. The Boys & Girls Club is abuzz with activity.
Huong Mai Hong, 12, and three of her girlfriends guzzle Cokes and laugh as two stumble on their skates.
"I love it here," Mai said. "It's a lot of fun. I have a lot of friends and there's a lot to do."
A Vietnamese girl and a Haitian girl play patty-cake. Three male teens from Vietnam squat at the edge of a sidewalk and watch people return from work, getting mail, doing laundry.
"All the Vietnamese, black and Hispanic kids play together," said Cindy Williams, who has lived at Rembrandt for three years and occasionally receives egg rolls from her Vietnamese neighbor downstairs.
She said everyone has found a way to live harmoniously. "Everybody respects each other."
The drainage ditch that provides water for Nguyen's garden was once dubbed "stolen car alley," for the cars and parts dumped there. But four years ago, Nguyen and her children cleared the area and planted their first herbs.
Nguyen, who has lived at Rembrandt for eight years, shares her vegetables with other families who do not have herb gardens.
A handful of gardens are sprinkled throughout the complex, but none as plentiful as Nguyen's. Some plots are as small as 3 square feet. When families move out, they give their plots to new families if they are Vietnamese, said Loan Nguyen, whose husband, Pham, is acquainted with all of the Vietnamese tenants at Rembrandt.
He is known as the social chairman in the complex. On his fourth day at Rembrandt, he went door-to-door, collecting money to help the poor in Vietnam. When Vietnam was hit by some of the worst flooding in a century, he was at their doorsteps again. Over the years, he has secured thousands of dollars and keeps meticulous records on paper and dry-erase boards mounted on the wall in his living room.
Pham and his wife host new immigrants in their two-bedroom apartment to make their transition easier and organize all of the parties.
And they bid farewell to the many families who move out.
"We don't keep touch with them," Pham said. "It's all a part of assimilating."
The children speak excellent English and rapid Vietnamese, serving as translators for their parents.
Language barriers limit conversations between neighbors, but somehow it works out.
Ruth Prophete was in the laundry room recently when a petite Vietnamese woman walked in. With a nod and smile, the woman pushed a plate filled with shrimp wrapped in Vietnamese-style crepes into Prophete's hands.
"She didn't speak English. She just brought it to me," Prophete said, smiling. "I don't even know her name. It shows that you don't have to live in a bad place if you live in the projects."