About PUCDC

The Eastern Coachella Valley is comprised of four unincorporated rural communities: Thermal, Oasis, Mecca and North Shore. The large majority of residents are agricultural worker families and they represent the local labor force that contributes approximately $700 million a year in agriculture to the region. Farm workers constitute the backbone of our national food system sustainability. But despite their remarkable contribution, these hard working communities live in pervasive poverty lacking decent affordable housing, economic opportunities, and community resilience to climate change.  These challenges to health and economic well being continue to plague our local communities whose residents work the fields.  The mobile home communities are known locally as “Polanco parks,” named for Richard Polanco, a state representative who sponsored 1992 legislation to spur the creation of affordable housing for farmworkers. 

Pueblo Unido Community Development Corporation (PUCDC) is a (501)(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization born from the initiative of community leaders with extensive experience and knowledge of these local issues and concerns in the rural Eastern Coachella Valley. Pueblo Unido CDC has been a leader in social justice change for over 15 years and has helped shape the platform for partner organizations and new developing organizations to continue building on those successes. With the persistence of the organization, the ECV farmworker community has benefited from continued equitable progress towards a brighter future and has paved a path for a healthy and sustainable community in the Eastern Coachella Valley.

Pueblo Unido CDC was founded in 2008 by Sergio Carranza, current Executive Director, and the late Rodolfo Piñon, Co-Founder and first Chair of the Board of Directors. Prior to founding Pueblo Unido, Sergio Carranza was an advocate for social and civil rights in his native country of El Salvador. His involvement with local social justice ministries made him aware of the profound social and economic disparities in the ECV. Soon he realized there was a real need to listen to the community, and concluded he could affect meaningful change by modeling initiatives on a community-driven perspective. Our goal remains the same regardless of our past success: to bring equity into the community and create the best present and future for the families we represent. Through continued partnerships and support from elected officials, government entities, community members and funding partners, we hope to create new opportunities that work at solving social issues that inequitably impact ECV farmworker families, including the severe affordable housing crisis and impacts of climate change.