The top story in today’s Miami Herald concerns high-level discussions involving the future of the tragically mismanaged Miami-Dade Housing Agency.
The Herald reports that HUD is recommending decisive changes to the local agency, involving either putting the agency into receivership, or, under the management of an “independent” authority reporting to the county commission.
But we are not sure this is HUD’s idea. We know how to read stories involving development in Miami-Dade County: look for the fingerprints of the de facto chair of the county commission, Natacha Seijas and her backers at the Latin Builders Association.
The Herald reports that the HUD point person is Orlando Cabrera, a former board director and general counsel for the Latin Builders. “… some have wondered whether Cabrera may be trying to re-establish himself in his old hometown. Cabrera rejected that suggestion.”
Just follow the money, which poor people do not have.
The business of County Hall is zoning changes for powerful development interests, not the needs of poor people. And certainly not the tens of thousands of poor families in Miami-Dade who slipped through the safety net while the county commission allowed the Housing Agency to be pillaged by second and third tier lobbyists and developers aspiring to the same influence and wealth as the first tier.
Now that the building boom is turning into a bust, the new needy are the same interests who have always dominated the County Commission.
What is the source of the bust? So far, the mainstream media has been reported the crisis in the subprime mortgage industry, a section of the market involving the lower end of production home markets. In Miami, that would be the effects on local builders whose net worth on paper is dissolving hour by hour and whose real bank accounts are burning huge piles of cash to carry costs of unsold inventory in former agricultural lands in South and West Miami-Dade.
These are Seijas’ backers and they are key players in the Latin Builders Association.
Local developers with close ties to county commissioners have a motive to privatize the Miami Dade Housing Agency through an “independent” authority: affordable housing development could keep their businesses running until the market for production homes in farmland revives—which some real estate economists predict will not happen before 2009.
Was HUD Cabrera's idea his own, or, theirs?
The Miami Herald gets part of the ongoing fraud right, at the end of its report: “If a new authority were appointed by the county commissioners, they could reassert control over a high-profile, high budget department—despite being the same body that allowed it to fall into such a shambles.”
It occurs to us that the “ownership society” itself deserves its own “house of lies” expose. But in the meantime, the Miami Herald should find out whose idea this “takeover plan” was, in the first place.
Follow the money.
5 comments:
Don't lump all the developers in the LBA. Natacha has many backers in the Miami Beach crew, Miller et al-- and there are many more of them on Miami Beach— they are all pulling strings behind the scene as well.
I too was going to report on this gimleteye but point would have been, we should all be embarrassed by our incompetent county government, once again, reported in the the Herald. I appreciate your view. Don’t know what to believe now.
Maybe we should have ditched the Home Rule. It is just adding a layer of incompetence to our government. I find it interesting now that the mayor is speaking up for the failed county agency.
Genius of Despair said... "Maybe we should have ditched the Home Rule." Now your talking!!!
OK, so now we have a Republican mayor who wants to play a big role in new years presidential election, and you guys want to give all the power to the FL legislature? Do you know what is going on up there? You think Miami-Dade is bad, who is watching the cages up there? Nobody!
What I don't understand is why the admineitrators at Power U, Miami Workers Center etc. are not called upon to solve the problems at MD HUD? Why are the crooks called to clean up the mess they made? By the way where is Angela Giddens, remember her from the airport. They should have fired the manager and gave her the job. Rather than replacing our Miami crooks with the crooks in the FL capital lets put the critics in charge they certainly can't do any worst! Let start a campaign to draft the activitist for these jobs.
There is a story in the housing developments too. Not the missing homes...but the apartment homes that are not healthy to live in. Where is the money there?
People are living with holes in the ceiling and mold. Why?
That wasn't the Mayor's fault. He didn't create the problem. It is his problem to stablize the agency enough to change the people running it and make it better. He doesn't want crooks in the agency anymore than we do.
Why haven't more people who stole money from the taxpayers been arrested?
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