Esteban Park, named after Esteban the Moor, the first recorded African in Texas who arrived as a shipwrecked slave on Galveston Island with Spanish conquistadors in 1528, is taking a big step and will be adding four coastal prairie style green housing cottages for workers.
There is a larger push in the philanthropic and social services community to move homeless people to permanent housing. Esteban Park was formed in 2010 by Great Plains Restoration Council (GPRC) with a land donation by Senior Pastors Rudy and Juanita Rasmus of St. John's United Methodist Church Downtown in Houston.
Pairing restoration ecology with social work, the pilot program of GPRC's Restoration Not Incarceration™ was built with the phenomenal participation of young homeless men and women from St. John's Bread of Life Homeless Shelter, who in turn were trained in trauma and crisis intervention, and stamina and resilience training, as we cleared over 1,000 invasive Chinese tallow trees allowing historic prairie seeds extant in the soil a chance to breathe, hand-dug a pocket wetland, began a reseeding program, and prepared the front of the park for an organic farm for the local 'food desert' Sunnyside/South Acres community.
All first participants successfully graduated Tier I (Knowledge and Retention) of Ecological Health, learning the basics of how "we take care of body and Earth as one," and "by taking care of others we take care of ourselves", as well as technical job skills.
The housing will be fit into the western border of the Park, integrating people and nature, and residents will trade caretaking hours of the Park for the rent of their home.
Click image above for larger view
The 4 main components of Esteban Park are:
- Coastal Prairie and Wetlands Preserve, with
handicap-accessible meditation trail - Organic Farm
- Green Housing Cottages
- Weekend Farmer's Market
With sunlight now reaching the ground and the first phases of land preparation and restoration complete, there is a lot more to do to complete the return of this prairie and operate the community farm. 5 partners are involved in this project: Great Plains Restoration Council, Bread of Life Homeless Shelter, St. John's Downtown, Temenos Community Development Corporation, and The Art Project Houston.
Future expansion may allow Esteban Park to connect to Sims Bayou, thereby creating a miles-long greenbelt and coastal prairie restoration jobs and services in underserved communities.
Like the devastated Gulf coastal prairie, which has less than 1% left, it's important for devastated people to have a chance to thrive in health.
The landscape architecture renderings have been generously provided by renowned landscape architect Keiji Asakura, of
Asakura Robinson Company.
Esteban Park is the springboard for GPRC's Restoration Not Incarceration™ movement, advances traditional conservation by involving new constituencies, and also offers participants travel opportunities to work in other prairie preserves operated by GPRC and partners.
The total remaining cost of this Esteban Park project and jobs program is expected to be $500,000 over 2 years.
As part of this budget, we hope to get many of the material needs donated in-kind. This also includes land acquisition of the rare near-virgin native coastal prairie remnant miraculously located directly adjacent to the east.
-Great Plains Restoration Council
