Everything you need to know about Hispanic communities in Palm Beach County
Palm Springs and Greenacres are quiet communities that rarely make headlines, but they have a story to tell.
In the past 30 years, they have become the Hispanic heart of Palm Beach County, nearly doubling in size with immigrant families from the Caribbean and South and Central America.
Many of these new residents hold essential jobs in the county, in fields like construction, schools and customer service.
But in some ways, Greenacres and Palm Springs are stuck in time, with little new housing built in recent years at prices working families can afford. Rising prices may force a large number of their new residents to move out of the county to cheaper places to live.
There is hope in Greenacres and Palm Springs that the communities can act before that happens, if they can find land and developers interested in building workforce housing.
Palm Beach County housing crisis squeezing blue-collar workers out of two Hispanic cities
Welcome to a land where time stood still, whose problems capture Palm Beach County's crucial question — Who can afford to live here? — and whose future raises issues about its blue-collar workforce.
Few parts of the county have changed as much in the past 30 years as Greenacres and Palm Springs. Since 1990, their combined populations have more than doubled and now stand at nearly 71,000, more than either Jupiter or Wellington. If they were one city, they would be the county’s fourth-largest.
That growth has come from the Caribbean and South and Central America and has made the area the hub of the county's Hispanic community. Its residents have become the people who make the county's economy go, driving 30 minutes or more every day to jobs in construction, health care, schools and service industries.
Yet the new construction that has altered the county's landscape is nowhere to be seen in Greenacres and Palm Springs. Residents are crowding into apartments and single-story homes built for smaller households decades ago and that are quickly becoming unaffordable — and pushing them to move out of the county and leave those jobs.
By the numbers: Meet the new Greenacres, Palm Springs, where Hispanic workforce lives
The makeup of Palm Springs and Greenacres has changed enormously over the past 30 years, even if the houses and strip malls in the area appear stuck in time.
What were sleepy, white suburbs between West Palm Beach and Wellington in the 1990s are now the home of Hispanics in Palm Beach County, and in many ways the hub of Palm Beach County's workforce, their residents having service jobs across the region.
Their populations have nearly doubled since the 1990s and, combined, have over 70,500 residents, making them bigger than either Wellington or Jupiter. If they were one city, they'd be the county's fourth-largest.
Hispanics are the dominant group in both communities. In 2010, Palm Springs became the county's first Hispanic-majority municipality, at 60%. That year's Census placed Greenacres' population at 42% and the 2020 at 44.7%. The growth of Hispanics reached the point where the Palm Beach County Commission in 2021 created its first Hispanic-majority district based in the two cities. Its first vote for a county commissioner is in November
'Stuck in time': What drew Hispanics to Greenacres, Palm Springs? Three share their stories
Alexandria Ayala remembers the moment Palm Springs finally had its turn in the spotlight. It was the day a plaza with a Chili’s, a Dollar Store and a Ross Dress For Less replaced the 99-cent store where her father got his first job after arriving from Puerto Rico.
“That was the biggest deal in the world,” she said, recalling that day, sometime around 2005, when she was in her early teens. “We were like, ‘We hit it big, man!’ ”
Brandon Cabrera has the fondest memories of Christmas Eve, but not for the presents. Every year, his family descended on Tropical Bakery to finish preparing the holiday orders. He‘d cook next to his father, uncle and cousins and make them listen to jingles in English.
“They didn't want to do it, but I loved it,” Cabrera said of the landmark Cuban business in Palm Springs. “One was making lechon, I was making cakes and we were all together filling orders and delivering our products for our people.”
The American Dream is alive in Greenacres, Palm Springs. Its Hispanic businesses prove it.
The wave of Hispanic and Caribbean immigration into Greenacres and Palm Springs since 2000 has done more than swell the communities' populations to more than 70,000 combined. It's also made them a hotbed of entrepreneurs, building businesses that honor the tastes and ways of home as they chase the American Dream.
People who visit a family-owned business in these communities can expect warm greetings in Spanglish, a sonic embrace of salsa or merengue blasting from speakers and business owners hugging clients and offering them a midday coffee, even at 5 p.m.
Restaurants and businesses in Palm Springs and Greenacres are filled with stories of uprooted families, immigrants who reinvented themselves with new careers and young entrepreneurs taking “a leap of faith” to start enterprises that survived the COVID-19 pandemic.
Palm Springs and Greenacres, they say, offered spaces where they could afford to open their restaurants and businesses and provide crucial services to an underserved Hispanic and populations — one they hope will survive a shortage of housing that has led some of its members to leave the county.
U.S. Census: Hispanics increasingly call this Palm Beach County bedroom community home
'Stuck in time': Can workforce housing help Greenacres, Palm Springs retain Hispanic core?
GREENACRES —The key to keeping housing costs in Greenacres and Palm Springs affordable for the working-class people now living there may require a giant bet on an idea many embrace but few understand.
The area has the potential of becoming Palm Beach County’s hub for workforce housing, said Kelly Smallridge, who grew up in Palm Springs during the 1980s and is now the CEO of the county’s Business Development Board.
Bringing more apartments and affordable homes to the communities, she said, not only would spur their economic development but also show everyone how important they are to the county's economy.
“There's still the misperception that workforce housing is lower-income, and it's not,” Smallridge said. “It's for people who get up and go to work every day and are the economic engine.”
'Developers need more skin in the game': County affordable housing bonds plan hits stumbling block
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County Hispanic Communities
