Miami, the tropical paradise with the most varied selection of apartments and luxury homes, is a desert when it comes to decent and affordable housing, Jennifer García knows well, a young woman who had to move to a cheaper place and six months to find it.
Due to the rise in house prices in Spanish neighborhoods like Little Havana or Hialeah, many people like Jennifer have settled in freedom city, an area that concentrates a predominantly low-income African-American population and has a reputation uncertain, although she had “no problem at all.”
Various new real estate developments Bloom on this hidden side of touristy Miami and hopefully they can help turn things around in a traditionally deprived area.
Liberty City is a neighborhood in northwestern Miami, closer to poverty than glamor. Photo: Ana Ochoa and AP
Jennifer’s rental apartment is located in Liberty Square as it is called the place where a residential complex was built over 80 years ago to improve the situation of African American workers living in dilapidated homes in Overtown, another neighborhood in Miami.
Today, the buildings of the nine blocks or blocks of Liberty Square, owned by Miami-Dade County, are being demolished and replaced with new ones with approximately 1,455 units as part of a development project by $ 300 million by the related group.
Soon, that 1930s project will only be left with the original communal center, which will be rehabilitated to continue fulfilling its mission.
Beaches and good life. One of the faces of Miami. Photo: Bloomberg
In two of the blocks there are three-story buildings painted in cheerful hues and already inhabited.
They rule in the apples that surround them the ruin, desolation and poverty.
A painful contract
The contrast is enormous and it hurts to watch.
In the old one-storey buildings there are bricked up doors and windows, but some still have clothes hanging at the entrance as if to warn of the human presence.
All who live in these now dilapidated houses have the opportunity to live in the new apartments or, with the help of a municipal subsidy, to settle in the place they want.
Liberty City, a predominantly African American neighborhood. Photo: AP
Albert Milo, president of Related Urban Development Group, the company behind this project, explains that they partnered with Miami-Dade County to replace old buildings with new ones, allowing them to build twice the number of units of the original complex.
That’s the business and also the way to get one affordable housing shortage that according to various sources in Miami it is 150,000 to 200,000 units, Milo points out.
The problem isn’t just Miami, it occurs and go to EE.UU. and it has to do with the ever unequal distribution of wealth.
The Gap, the gap in Spanish, a coalition of civil society organizations, estimated the national shortage of rental housing for people with extremely low incomes at seven million in its latest annual report for 2020.
Restaurants in Little Havana, Miami. Photo: EFE
There are only 36 available and affordable rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income households, of which there are 10.9 million nationwide, 20% African American and 15% Hispanic.
US $ 1600 rent per month
According to several specialist pages, this is the average rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Miami about $ 1,600while the median selling price of a home is $ 350,000 to $ 400,000.
These are unattainable figures for Jennifer García, a 21-year-old American of Cuban and Colombian descent who lives with her mother in an apartment with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen, dining room and living room in a single room. Eden, as the second phase of the $ 300 million project to rehabilitate Liberty Square has been called.
The apartments, from one to four bedrooms, are delivered with the Fully equipped kitchen and García, who used to live near Little Havana, shows it to visitors with satisfaction.
The average rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Miami is about $ 1,600. Photo: AFP
That’s what the young woman says when they told her about Liberty City I had doubtsbut when he saw the apartment they disappeared and the same thing happens with friends visiting his house.
All the people he has dealt with since moving here in November 2020 ” very nicewith her and her mother, who has already convinced two Latina friends to live in Liberty Square.
Rent based on income
The rent is determined based on the income of the tenants and that also guarantees one economic diversityfrom people with the highest housing subsidy to workers with fixed wages in sectors such as health care or education.
“That helps change a neighborhood,” says the manager of the real estate group, which has other similar affordable housing projects running for more than a billion dollars in total.
The new buildings They have security guards and a parking garage in a central courtyard, where there are landscaped areas and children’s games.
It’s a different world outside, but Jeniffer García, who works relatively closely as a lifeguard in a Miami urban park, doesn’t seem to be scared.
A promoter says police have reported that crime in the area has fallen by about 90% in the past year.
Milo says there are plans to install a nationwide supermarket in the area that will generate 3,000 jobs, and some buildings will have commercial properties for rent to boost the local economy.
There will also be a new school, a medical center and recreation centers. Only with houses no neighborhood develops, he emphasizes.
The author is a journalist for EFE
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