The Miami Herald reprints a Wall Street Journal article in Saturday’s paper, “Condo buyers seek justice”, citing the rising chorus of buyers angry at developers’ vanishing promises in Miami's crashing condo market.
The only way out of the mess created by the great Miami destruction machine is massive public investment in transportation and other infrastructure that will cost 1000 times what it would have cost if development had been reigned in and appropriately managed by past generations of city and county commissioners. That means new taxes.
Some of the elected officials are still standing guard. Like Natacha Seijas.
Louis Goodkin, a Miami real-estate analyst, has never been quoted in our local paper saying as he did to the Wall Street Journal, “These markets were essentially propped up by speculators.”
There is an inverse relationship between the extent to which citizens have a say in zoning and permitting decisions and the degree of influence by speculators and lobbyists.
Right now, in Florida, real estate speculators and lobbyists run the state and county commissions. The degree of harm to the public interest is enormous. Read an honest cost tally in your local paper lately? NYET.
City and county commissioners should be held to account for a balance between the public good and private profit. But they never are.
The Wall Street Journal article, reprinted in the Herald, concludes with another real estate expert shrugging, “Lost profits are always hard to prove because they are speculative.”
And there it is: bad gambles are the hidden tax that people who already live here pay to subsidize more people coming in the future.
This is something that the well-to-do should think about, as they sit in traffic on Old Cutler Road while one Shoma or Lennar development after another is built on filled wetlands around the old Burger King headquarters while the housing market sinks. Incentives include upgraded applicances. Great.
The great Miami destruction machine can’t be glossed over by spin masters or public relations firms with close ties to elected officials and the media. It’s a Parrot Jungle, isn’t it?
2 comments:
The current cycle of events in the Miami housing market has been created by four main factors.
The first is,too many people, and uncontroled illegal immigration is at the root of that problem. You can't put 10 lbs. of flour in an 5 lb. bag.
The second, a result of the first, is higher and higher prices for fewer homes and rentals. Landlords love it.
The third is, greedy developers who will take their profits and leave the problems of over-population and traffic chaos to the "powers that be" in city and county goverments.
The fourth is, the city and county governments,who for years have given in to the developers and speculators, and put the real housing needs of the working people on a back burner.
Example: The Miami Dade County Commission just voted 6-1 to allow a developer to put a bunch of buildings near the runway at Tamiami Airport. A crucial vote that six of the thirteen commissioners didn't even show up for...and they want a raise?
Thanks to Katy sorenson for the only "no" vote!
Gimleteye said:
"And there it is: bad gambles are the hidden tax that people who already live here pay to subsidize more people coming in the future."
I wish I could nail that to everyone's forehead in Miami Gimleteye. It is as I said in my November 10th blog: Barreto and Pino will make their money in their 'bad gamble" to develop at the end of a runway. We, the public, will subsidize moving the people out of there in the future.
Post a Comment