Over the past three years, ridesharing companies such as Uber and Lyft have not only decreased the demand for taxi services in Miami-Dade County, but also depreciated the taxi industry’s most valuable asset: the medallion.
Miami-Dade County’s median income — a scant $44,000 — is remarkably low compared to virtually every other city of its size. This creates a whole host of problems for local and longtime residents. International billionaires jack up the city’s property values, inflating rental prices and forcing Miamians to either leave town or spend the highest share of their income on rent compared to residents of any other American city.
Almost a year ago, the Florida Department of Health announced Wynwood was ground zero for Zika, the only place in the United States where the virus was being spread by mosquitoes. Soon after, the CDC began telling pregnant women to avoid traveling to the area, and a kind of panic hit local streets.
With rents and housing prices soaring ever higher across Miami-Dade County, how do locals afford to live here? New Times set out to find out by talking to Miamians with varying income levels about how they make life in South Florida work for them. This is the first story in a series.
A Miami Herald series earlier this year showed that Miami Beach’s luxury hotels — built for real-estate magnates, international billionaires, pro athletes, and reality stars — are staffed by low-earning housekeepers who can’t afford rent on the Beach and are forced to spend hours riding buses every day. The state minimum wage, capped at $8.15 per hour, has not kept up with the city’s luxury-level rents, and living a humane distance from work is virtually impossible.
Even under ideal circumstances, finding an apartment or house to rent is an utter nightmare. You spend weeks poring over misleading Craigslist ads with retouched photos, haggling over deposits and monthly fees, and trying to please NIMBY condo boards that hold your entire living arrangement in their hands.
To be poor in America is to give up every second of your free time. It means working ten- or 12-hour shifts folding towels at luxury Miami Beach resorts, only to ride multiple buses two hours there, two hours back, waking up at 4 a.m., and getting home at 8 every night. It means skipping voting or your kids’ graduation because you don’t get paid time off.
Given the building industry’s outsize role in the local ecosystem, you might assume Miami’s construction workers are able to earn a solid living from the profession. But a study released earlier this month shows 44 percent of Miami’s construction workers have trouble paying for basic necessities such as rent, food, hospital bills, utility payments, and items for their children.
Longtime Overtown residents and Miami historians will both tell you that highway overpasses destroyed the neighborhood. The formerly segregated community, which used to be called “Colored Town,” was full of renowned clubs, brightly colored homes, churches, and a thriving mix of Caribbean and African cultures that played itself out in city streets each day.
There comes a point in life when you grow tired of living in six-person apartments, swatting flies from the leftover pastelitos your roommate left congealing on the table, and cleaning up after the feral cats your other housemate insists on bringing into your tiny space. For a huge number of people, that desire comes right after college ends.
Do-nothing, intellectually bankrupt politicians often refer to Miami as a “boom-and-bust” town. The city’s economy, which is almost entirely based on real-estate trades, rises and falls rapidly, they say. It expands as foreign investors flood the market with cash and crashes once that river of money dries up…
In September 2015, the company that owns Miami’s Magic City Casino — West Flagler Associates — tried to apply for a license to open up a new poker room in downtown Miami, through an arcane licensing process involving “summer jai-alai” permits.
All the painkillers, Band-Aids, and antibiotics in the world wouldn’t have made much of a difference to Angel Fernandez, the Scarface character whose dismemberment by chainsaw was the 1983 gangster flick’s most infamous scene. But today the building where the grisly attack was set is being converted into a CVS.
Miami residents were already skeptical about mega-developer Moishe Mana’s plans to pave over a huge portion of Wynwood and build a gleaming micro-city in its place. Mana, who splits his time between Manhattan and the Magic City, is the largest single landowner in Wynwood. For years, he’s been fighting to…
Florida lawmakers have, over the past ten years, quietly siphoned $1.3 billion away from a $1.8 billion, statewide fund for affordable housing, the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Tallahassee Bureau reported Friday. Asked whether this is a problem, Miami Republican state Rep. Carlos Trujillo basically flipped his hometown — which is trapped in an unprecedented affordability crisis — the bird.
Miami real-estate analyst Andrew Stearns releases a report about the health of the city’s condominium market four times per year. Read between the lines of Stearns’ last three consecutive releases, and it’s easy to picture him pulling out clumps of his hair and nervously loosening his tie as he writes the reports.
All those shiny new condo buildings popping up on the Miami skyline sure look fun. They’re clean, they’re well-designed, and they’re everywhere, including places where poor people used to live. Downtown Miami, in particular, sure has a heck of a lot of condos to sell, so please, by all means, come to Miami-Dade County and tour a condominium or four! Your local elected leaders will thank you!
Greater downtown Miami — which encompasses the city’s classic downtown area plus Wynwood, Overtown, Brickell, Edgewater, and the Design District — houses South Florida’s largest collection of young, hip urbanites. The area is all but engineered for people under 35: It’s crammed with artisan-cocktail bars, a never-ending supply of street art, and nightclubs where Diplo spontaneously appears. Without young people, Miami’s downtown would be a drab concrete dystopia.
Affordability is the most pressing political issue in Miami. City and county officials continue approving luxury-rental complexes in the Magic City despite a leviathan of data telling them to stop because they’re actively contributing to a housing crisis.
There are lots of reasons to tread carefully when finding a roommate in Miami. If you’re not in a relationship, your choices basically boil down to a high-school friend you will grow to hate, a co-worker you already see way too much of, some predatory old dude essentially looking for a live-in college-aged prostitute, or an uptight neat freak who will flip out if you don’t use a coaster on her very expensive West Elm coffee table. Worst case, you end up with a creepy rando from Craigslist who actually tries to murder you.
At the beginning of last week, the room-sharing company Airbnb seemed to have a good relationship with the City of Miami — more harmonious than Miami Beach, where city officials have passed an ever-increasing series of restrictions on short-term rentals. But then City of Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado last week proposed an ordinance cracking down on Airbnb-style “vacation” rentals. Regalado’s new law would ban short-term rentals in roughly two-thirds of the city. It would also subject any Airbnb, Homeaway, or other temporary home rentals in the remaining third to some fairly strict licensing requirements.
Oh, the single life. Scrolling through Tinder while avoiding men who post photos only of themselves in Scarface T-shirts. Setting up Google alerts for your ex who travels the world painting watercolors of dog weddings. And, of course, drinking heavily to drown your sorrows, only to climb back into bed in your parents’ house in Kendall, because single people have been priced out of Miami’s rental market.
