Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all? by gimleteye

From time to time, Miami Herald editors let Fred Grimm write a hard-edged piece. (We can only imagine the conversations between executives and editors: 'is it time to let Fred write, now?')

Today Grimm mostly succeeds in describing the exact feeling we have, staring up at the seemingly numberless condominiums that only the wealthiest in Miami can afford to live in--and most of those, are tied one way or another to the development of production homes or condos.

So, the landscape whose infrastructure deficits plague the rest of us, is created by the wealthiest in Miami most for people who can use US dollars like play money. (ie. their native currencies are so much stronger than ours.)

But instead of quibbling with Grimm (Miami is sucking up to the top .5 percent of the wealthy from around the world, not 2 percent), we note his piece is another example how the Miami Herald pulls its punches.

To round out that perspective, we turn to another story in the Miami Herald by Matthew Pinzur, who reports today of outgoing chair of the county commission Joe Martinez offering to “help” mediate the vast oversupply of homes and condos with citizens who need housing by using county funding.

We think Joe Martinez is a comic at heart. Truly. He's affable with a hint of menace wrapped around his too-thin skin. Which is perfect, in a way, for the role he plays on the county commission: the clown at the circus who rides around on an tricycle while the other acts are going on.

Here is the joke.

Over time, what MIGHT have worked in Miami would have been for county and city governments (MIAMI!) to test the plans and permits for new construction against HISTORIC ABSORPTION RATES and DENY building permits and zoning changes that FAR EXCEEDED historic absorption rates.

But instead of taking care of affordable housing, the majority of city AND county commissioners literally fell to their knees, praying at the feet of any production home builder or condo king who needed a zoning change or permit. That would be the Latin Builders Association and South Florida Builders Association: two sides of the same coin.

The Herald editorial board never protested and only rarely raised a sceptical eyebrow--which is a shame, because when the housing crash comes there will many, many more readers than us calling for scalps.

For these and sundry other reasons, we recognize what the Miami Herald won't state to be the truth: that the heart of the problem is the Miami Dade county commission, because county government provides or is supposed to provide coordinated services for the county and all the municpalities on which building permits are based, like water supply and sewerage.

Our county commission, based on single member districts--13 of them in all--is dysfunctional and cannot be reformed.

Of course, you will not read this unvarnished opinion in the Miami Herald, because its real estate advertising pages are full of the fetid problem.

Today Martinez wants to be helpful and bail out excess inventory owned by his campaign contributors. Yesterday he wanted to push through all applications to move the Urban Development Boundary to create MORE inventory.

Well you say, now the market is at work.

Not really. What Martinez is proposing is to leverage GOVERNMENT to soften the landing of a housing bust.

And so we are left, after reading the Miami Herald, steamed again.

One editorial gets it almost right, about the way “we” are sucking up to the rich through overdevelopment of housing that only a handful can afford, and one story reports on the county commission wrapping concern for ordinary people in a scheme to rescue powerful constituents—production home builders who live in those penthouse apartments and fly away on Netjets to get away from the crowds and traffic they have created for the rest of us.

We know the big builders will be on the phone today, to their friends in the executive suite of the Herald, complaining that the Herald itself with editorials like Grimm's is causing the housing crash. They will also be on the phone to their friends on the governing board of the Federal Reserve: give us lower interest rates!

It's as much bullshit as the demagoguery that will start as soon as the unemployment rate starts going through the roof--because home and condo construction slows to a halt--and claims for more concessions from planning and zoning to stimulate jobs, jobs, jobs by the Latin Builders.

But for now we are just going to point out the gap between Grimm’s editorial and Pinzur’s story, and how the Herald again fails to connect the dots.

Leading us to wonder, why exactly do we pay to read the Miami Herald?