The Dream Endangered

Many Immigrants Who Prospered in the Boom Now Face Crisis

Oscar Arias saw in the real estate boom an opportunity to retire home to Nicaragua a wealthy man after fleeing the Sandinistas with nothing to his name in the 1980s.

He spent years in the United States toiling as a dishwasher, a chef and a construction worker. In 2001, he founded a residential and commercial renovation company, Potomac Restoration, out of his Woodbridge home. He bought two additional houses during the boom and planned to sell them and return to Nicaragua with a nice cushion, he said.

But the housing bust has left the 54-year-old on the brink of ruin. He has worked only a month this year. Two of the houses he bought during the boom are facing foreclosure. Unpaid bills pile up in his living room office.

Hispanic immigrants such as Arias benefited broadly from the construction boom and rising home values, which created jobs and nurtured flourishing local economies. Newcomers flocked to places such as Prince William County in search of well-paying, easy-to-find construction jobs. Established immigrants found work as real estate agents and loan officers, founded construction companies, and opened restaurants and retail shops catering to the influx. Now many are facing the consequences of the bust.

Earlier this month, the Pew Hispanic Center released a report that found that higher percentages of immigrants in U.S. counties correlated with elevated foreclosure rates. The report also singled out local economic conditions, the cost of housing, and a greater incidence of subprime lending to blacks and Hispanics as key factors. Prince William was among those counties with a high foreclosure rate and a sizable immigrant population that the center studied. And stories such as Arias's illustrate how closely immigrant fortunes were tied to the real estate market.

As he tells it, Arias fled the communist Sandinista government in March 1985, cramming into a small sailboat with 11 other men and setting off for El Salvador. After being detained for two weeks in that country, he made the trip north with the help of a coyote through Guatemala and Mexico and into the United States, crossing the border to Texas and walking to Corpus Christi. From there, he flew to Dulles International Airport and spent his last $30 on a cab to a relative's home in Columbia Heights. The next day, he began work as a dishwasher.

Arias worked his way up to chef, and his employer sponsored a visa. His wife and children joined him. In 1991, he moved from Falls Church to Woodbridge in search of a cheap place to live. He bought his first home for $115,000 on a small cul-de-sac off Route 1 called Rosedale Court and soon began working construction jobs. His neighbors were mostly retired military members, and he was the only Hispanic on his block, he said. He struggled to feed his family, but he enjoyed his work, his life in the United States, and the peace and quiet of his community. He gained full U.S. citizenship in 1999.

His Washington journey mirrored one of the region's most significant demographic shifts in recent decades. As growth exploded in the outer suburbs, immigrants moved outward from the District and the inner suburbs. Counties such as Loudoun and Prince William became destinations for recent immigrants.

By 2006, the immigrant population of Loudoun and Prince William counties had grown to more than 14 times its 1980 level, according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. In Prince William, immigrants made up 22 percent of the county's population in 2006, up from just 4 percent in 1980. Meanwhile, the geographic origins of Prince William's immigrants also changed, with people from Latin America making up 54 percent of the immigrant population in 2006, up from 28 percent in 1980. That put the county in the top 12 in the nation for Hispanic growth, according to the study.

"Immigrants were drawn to these areas because of the economic activity," said Audrey Singer, a senior fellow with Brookings and the author of the study. "A lot of Latinos were moving to these places."

Arias said the growing economy meant new opportunities. One of his first jobs as an independent contractor was renovation work at the General Services Administration headquarters in downtown Washington. His company grew quickly as he found work throughout the region painting houses, remodeling basements, building terraces and refurbishing a hotel in Herndon.

He employed a crew of Hispanic immigrants as workers. He bought two vans and a new Dodge Ram truck. He opened an office in the nearby town of Dumfries.