Mayor Alvarez come back from Washington! We don’t need to fight HUD for control of section 8 money. While you were gone it looks like a solution is at hand to ELIMINATE the need for affordable housing. According to reporter, Douglas Hanks, in the Miami Herald today Tourism industry looking abroad for workers.
The people from abroad come on H-2B visas and do low wage service jobs, that employers here believe no one in Miami WANTS to do. Maybe they can't afford to do these jobs and live here too.
Let me go backwards with my logic.
We need affordable housing for low income workers. The low income workers can’t afford to live here and they don't want the low wage jobs according to some employers (Hotel Industry). Hoteliers claim: Low income jobs are not getting filled. Because they cannot fill openings the tourist industry imports workers from overseas. So, then, if employers can’t fill jobs in other areas of the job market, why not use H-2B visas? Then we would have no need for affordable housing at all! We could just import everyone!
For those who cannot tell, I am mad about this situation.
We are sending middle level jobs out - outsourcing. People in places like India, Ireland, etc. are doing accounting, computer jobs, reading X-rays etc. I thought: well at least we have service jobs here, they can't outsource them. Okay, I know they are low paying jobs, but they can’t send jobs like maids, waitresses, bus boys, etc. overseas. Well, from the article, I see they have found a way to get around that: They are bringing people in to fill service jobs! I think it sucks. The article states:
“Federal law requires employers to pay foreign workers that occupation's prevailing wage and prove they can't find local employees instead. But critics see the growing popularity of foreign workers as a way for employers to avoid boosting pay for U.S. employees.”
And as Eliseo Medina, Southern director for the Service Employees International Union, said in the article: “Generally, what it means is they can't find workers for the wages they want to pay,''
This is not a healthy trend.
Follow my logic further (at your own peril). Travel in your mind about 50 years in the future. In rich areas, there will be no one but rich people. The rich will get their needs met by importing and exporting labor to serve them and they will house the foreign workers in dormitories or bus in people from ghettos. We will have more and more ghettos (Wikipedia: The term now commonly labels any poverty-stricken urban area.) in crappy areas very, very far from rich areas. People in such areas will get bused in to work. They already do that in Southampton, New York. They need people to work at Burger King and they bus them back and forth from cheaper neighborhoods (over an hour ride each way). And, one reader pointed out that they bus people from Florida City (the poorest city in Miami Dade County) to the Keys.
In Miami gentrification is already pushing people out because they can't afford to live in their neighborhoods anymore on low salaries. That may be why the unemployment is so low. People might be forced to move to survive...less people looking for jobs.
Why do we keep pushing people around? My point? I can't seem to take this to a logical conclusion. I just know: This stinks!
14 comments:
Hasn't this already started. Aren't we already busing people to work in the Keys from Florida City?
Corporations might do well to look at the starbucks model: Health insurance for all workers.
If we continue to treat workers like a commodity - real people suffer. Corporations should not get rich off the backs of the poor. They should try to raise the standards and salary for honest work.
now that you mention it, i have seen a lot of young Russian girls doing service jobs...
Not only Rusians, but Brazilians, Colombians, Ecuadoreans, etc. and not only in the service industry. I've found people in the banking industry working as tellers, who don't speak English nor Spanish, therefore, one is unable to communicate with them. They probably are recent arrivals willing to work for minimum wage and the corporations get away by paying low wages therefore increasing their already exorbitant profits.
Why do we owe people affordable housing? Isn't it what the market will bear? It is up to them to make enough money to afford housing. If they can't afford it so, let them move to cheaper areas. Why does everyone need a handout? Why should corporations make less profit paying unskilled jobs more money, so people can afford to live in Miami? Companies owe it to their stockholders to make as much as possible. The people should get a skill and stop complaining.
Dear last Anonymous:
If you have money to live here, you might take this to heart:
"Another way to look at it, is that not all of it is "your" money -- money you earned all by yourself with no dependence on anyone.
Great wealth can be accumulated only by using other people's money -- through infrastructure paid for by taxpayers, and through transfers of wealth directly from taxpayers to you, through government subsidies, writing off business expenses, tax breaks, no-bid Contracts and so on. These are transfers of wealth from ordinary citizens to the wealthy.." George Lakoff
- So maybe you should thank some of these less fortunate people who pay taxes but are struggling with housing costs. (We have plenty of no bid deals in Miami.)
We don't bus in Southampton, NY. Most of the low-income workers live here. They just stuff a couple dozen into a house.
They bused when I lived there in the 90's
I was shocked by what the Hotel guy, who hired 45 of these workers, said in the article, it was pretty offensive:
"It's a nice injection of eagerness and wanting to things right,"
What is he saying: that workers in Miami don't want to do things right?
How about a nice multi-family set-up in 3 bedroom house in your neighborhood?
Something has to give. I know that there are multiple families living in group homesteads all over the county. And the economics of low pay, no skills and limited housing is why.
When you make $40,000. a year and you can't afford to be a single adult, even in a rental... things are sadddddddddd.
At least at ocean reef they have a dorm for the employees while working.
Building more housing is not working. We have housing. What is affordable?
I have a sect'y that just moved to a Melbourne, FL "senior complex". She can get a small apartment there complete with meals prepared down in a community center for under $500.00 a month.
What is wrong with the picture? We can't even rent an apt (1 bedroom, 650 square foot) for $1000 a month? Many of the 142nd Ave apartments went condo in Kendall, so I am not sure if any rentals would be available.
What determines affordable?
In the example in the post above, assume that a person brings home $2000 a month. Rent is $1000, electricity $75, car insurance $100, car payment $350, gas $100, groceries $350, telephone S40, and then the person has miscellaneous expenses: such occasional lunch out, hair cuts, car repair, medical or whatever.
No vacation, no movies, no cable, no internet, no trips to the Performing Arts Center, and no children! That is life in Miami for your teachers and police officers, and many people living here don't even bring that home.
So, how do we live in Miami?
last anonymous:
How do we live in Miami?
Get married: Combine income. Or as one reader above pointed out: you can live in the barracks at Ocean Reef.
"get a skill" the one post above says well what is surprising about the growing dynamics of outsourcing is the extent to which skilled jobs can be moved overseas. For instance an article in the WSJ a few days ago discusses 26 y.o. Indian MBAs that are approving or declining multi-million dollar loans for US banks/investment firms based upon their own judgment and knowledge of real or fraudulent business practices in the USA. Very specific and contextual knowledge that now is done somewhere else at less than 10 percent of the cost in USA. Wait till they start outsourcing the municipal police, then there will be an uproar.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development gives Millions of Dollars to Miami-Dade County and the City of Miami in order to address safe, decent and affordable housing for the very low to high moderate residents. These free Entitlement Dollars are to be utilized in order to ensure that all citizens, regardless of race, enjoy a quality of life that builds and sustains community. Those who are requiring subsidies are to be included in the development process. Taxpayers should be concerned that their HOME funds, SURTAX, SHIP, HOPWA and other Federal and State housing funds should function and operate according to law. Washington should take over dysfunctional housing agencies that are not in compliance. Elected officials should be held accountable for Millions of Dollars that are being found and Developers held accountable for their participation in the process. However, the issue of affordable housing should exist for all income levels who require their affordable housing to be maintained. Why should those recipients of free housing funds find themselves without homes and with massive amounts of code violations? Why should the County and City allow for forgiveness of liens and taxes and pass on the properties to developers? Let's ask Miami-Dade Housing Agency why the Federal Government is having trouble with their way of doing business. Housing and economic vitality are all part of community development.
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