Leaders of the Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee on Anti-Poverty, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, reflected on the history of the organization, discussing how it has been a positive force for change within the Latino community.
“It’s a big milestone,” said Arnulfo Manriquez, current president/CEO, of MAAC’s golden anniversary. “We are a catalyst and our mission has always been not just to provide services we are contracted to deliver, but to really focus on self-sufficiency and advocacy for the community at large.”
“MAAC has become an institution,” noted Roger Cazares, MAAC’s retired leader who led the group for 34 years. Cazares noted MAAC owns a number of firsts within the Latino community, including being the first group to successfully charter its own high school, the MAAC Community Charter School established in 2001 as an alternative to Chula Vista’s eight high schools.
During its 50-year history, MAAC has had a huge impact within the greater San Diego community offering a wide range of social services including providing senior and affordable housing, DUI programs, weatherization and helping low-income residents with utility bills.
MAAC was founded on a vision to provide a place where local families in need could find the means to attain self-sufficiency. Together, members from a number of groups including the San Diego Chapter of the GI Forum, Hermandad Mexicana, Laborer’s Local #89, Association of Mexican-American Educators, and the Council of Latin American Clubs, along with other leaders of San Diego’s Mexican American community, turned their vision into reality and founded the Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee on Anti-Poverty.
Manriquez said MAAC became a reality because Cazares and others in the early days saw “a whole bunch of other needs in the Mexican-American community and there were no other organizations filling those needs.”
So, Manriquez said, MAAC did what it’s done best over the years: step in and make a difference.
“One need we filled was with the weatherization program, repairing homes and making them safe, weather stripping windows and doors with insulation and checking water heater and furnace issues making sure there were no carbon monoxide dangers. We also started a head start program for pre-schoolers from newborn to 5 years to get them ready for kindergarten.”
Cazares pointed out MAAC was revolutionary in its time because the group was actually responsible for “turning around” gang members, many of whom participated in constructing the Mercado apartments, a 144-unit affordable housing apartment complex with a service center open to the community which was built by MAAC in 1994.
“It was the first major development in the Logan Heights community since the bridge was built that required seven different funding sources including federal tax credits,” said Cazares, a former banker, who cobbled together the financial deal that got the Mercado built.
Cazares noted the city had a requirement in place that all subcontractors on the Mercado project had to be minority- or women-owned businesses.
“We wanted that to be 40 percent, so we began hiring businesses employing young kids in the neighborhood, who included gang members,” Cazares said adding gang member participation in the MAAC project had a profound effect on them.
Cazares said someone came up to him and said, “I know something you don’t know —you saved lives, and you don’t even know it. My brother was one of those gang members who worked on the Mercado project and he’d been shot six times. You saved his life.’”
Manriquez noted MAAC’s role in the community has evolved over the years.
“We wanted to do everything,” he said. “But we became an organization that fills in gaps where there aren’t other organizations or government isn’t available.”
MAAC has become a beacon in the Latino community, Manriquez said.
“We’re the first ones they call,” he said.
“We made a difference,” concluded Cazares. “We addressed the needs of our community.”
