Vecinos Unidos, Inc. (United Neighbors) was founded in March 1992 by Rosa Lopez, a visionary, affordable housing advocate and grassroots community leader. Rosa’s vision was to build affordable housing in West Dallas that would both empower residents with education about homeownership and create generational family wealth. In 1995, under Rosa’s leadership, Vecinos Unidos created Casa Rio, a planned development of 57 brick homes in the Los Altos neighborhood. Each new homeowner was given classes on how to maintain their new homes.

Rosa mentored community leaders and created a coalition of 14 West Dallas pocket neighborhoods, creating the “super neighborhood group”, West Dallas 1. Rosa also led community leaders in creating a neighborhood stabilization overlay to protect West Dallas from gentrification in the La Bajada neighborhood.