The Neighborhood
Affordable Housing
Social and Economic Trends. Raul Guerrero.
A middle-school teacher who used to live downtown explained: “I make around $52,000. Subtract taxes, social security, health insurance, and I am left with some $38,000 to bring home… Ask any realtor how much housing costs in downtown.”
Downtown NEWS did ask local realtor Zoila Perez-Chanquet. “The average rent for Downtown was $1600–1700 for a studio,” she replied via email. “A one-bedroom apartment averaged between $ 1700–2200. For two bedrooms rents increased to $ 2200–3000.”
Downtown’s rebirth, gentrification, cost the middle-school teacher and her two children their middle-class status. “Having to spend close to $30,000 a year in housing, we quickly became the working poor.”
That she left town would be simply a sad anecdote, but for the lack of good schools for downtown children, and the fact that good schools depend on good teachers.
Change Might Be on the Way
On December 13, the City of Miami Commission passed unanimously inclusionary litigation sponsored by District 2 Commissioner Ken Russell. It mandates developers in designated zones to allocate apartments for the local workforce, including teachers and police officers. To qualify, you must make between 60 and 120 percent of the Miami-Dade $45,000 income median.
And what waters the garden of the developers’ generosity? More density, meaning they would be able to build extra floors to offset the market-rate difference. As it stands now, 14% percent of the units in new developments will be for workforce/affordable housing. The model has successfully been tried voluntary, hence some developers are on board.
Downtown News caught up with Commissioner Russell:
“For Miami to be a great city, we’ve got to do a much better job of ensuring that there is a healthy mix of affordable options for our residents at all income levels. We have an incredible opportunity to test out and improve this model of inclusionary zoning in the Omni CRA neighborhood, which is one of the last areas in the downtown core where there is land available for major projects that can help us make a dent on this issue.”
Common wisdom has it that the three human inevitabilities are death, taxes, and change. Perhaps we should add hope to the list.
Raul Guerrero, Editor, Downtown NEWS.
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