Julio and Yancy met through a friend in El Salvador in January of 2006. They immediately began to spend time together. They welcomed a baby girl, Ashley, in September 2008, but the reality was that life in El Salvador was difficult. Yancy’s father had come to the United States in 1989 with amnesty from the American government. With his help, Yancy received a green card and lived in Chicago with their baby.
After a few months, Julio and Yancy realized that it would be difficult to be a family if they could not be together. Julio made the decision to come to the U.S. by land, walking from El Salvador to Texas in June of 2010. After a few weeks, Julio and Yancy reunited in Minneapolis. They lived with a few of Julio’s family members, but they eventually decided that they need their own home. Although both were working, only Yancy had the documents to prove it in the rental application. They moved into an apartment at Seasons Park in Richfield.
Julio and Yancy continued to work and live in their apartment for six more years. Julio worked as a janitor at a school, and Yancy worked at a hotel. They got married in November 2012 and had a son, Jefferson, in December of the same year. They also began the process to apply for a green card for Julio.
In 2017, the owners of Seasons Park decided that they wanted to sell the apartments. The same thing had happened with another community in Richfield, and all the residents had to leave because the new owner wanted to make it into a luxury property. Aeon bought Seasons Park in 2017 to keep all 422 homes affordable and prevent residents from being displaced.
Julio eventually got his green card at around the same time, in August 2017. He immediately began to look for work that would give him official documents. A friend in the apartments told him that he could get a job cleaning the apartments. Just a month after getting legal residency in Minnesota, Julio began a job that would give him a fair wage and an opportunity for a better life.
The same year, they had their last child, Julio Jr. In September of 2018, Julio was promoted to do maintenance in the apartments – an opportunity for advancement that he says he could not have found in other companies. Yancy also began to work cleaning the apartments, and the two began to consider the possibilities for their children if they could continue in these positions.
Truthfully, the opportunity that Aeon offered them has changed their lives, as well as the lives of their children. On February 3, 2020, the family bought a house in Bloomington, where they can give their children more space to play and grow. Although they no longer live in the Seasons Park apartments, they continue to work there, supporting their community.
They have various favorite memories: when their children were born, when they bought their house, when Julio got his papers. The reality, he says, is that “you live in fear, when you don’t have a license… you think about what could happen.” Everything changed with his papers and with the stability of their home and jobs with Aeon. “It’s an achievement. It’s a dream come true.”
In the future, Julio and Yancy would like to continue supporting their community at Seasons Park and at Aeon. They know that they have had a sense of stability that many people never experience. They hope that their children continue to study, fighting every day to achieve their goals. They are working to support them as much as they can, so they can have a better life than they have had. Their children inspire them: “I hope I do my best for them, every day when I wake up.”
