Question of the day, by gimleteye

OK, blog readers. Here's a Monday morning question: what daily newspaper in Miami could fail to provide an editorial opinion while reporting a) foreclosure auctions listing Miami properties selling at up to 50 percent discount from listing price, b) note, in a secondary column, the outrageous inequities of mortgage lender CEO's walking away from the real estate inferno with hundred million dollar paydays, and c) printing the massive overdevelopment of Homestead as positive, "good thing" on the front page of its Business Monday?

If you guessed The Miami Herald, you would be right:

Today's Miami Herald is a breath-taking compendium of how print news has gone off-track: so dependent on real estate advertising that it STILL, in the midst of the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, does not know how to communicate a coherent vision with its readers.

The part that is most frustrating is that Ed Wasserman's editorial on new direction in print newspapers toward hyper-local, narrow cast, circles around the core issue that we have been blogging about and around for well-over a year. In other words, there is light; only not too much of it.

eyeonmiami is the hyper-local model that tries in its anonymous, persistent way to sift the kernels of news to publish a coherent view of the economic, social and political forces that drive the region. Isn't this disconnect--between the print news that people get and the news that people want-- partly responsible for our present sad state of affairs?

Wasserman, if not the editors, acknowledges that readers have been shut out of important information because the financial model of newspapers is crippled without classifieds, which migrated to the internet, and real estate, an industry that is imploding.

And still, still, Business Monday tries to fluff up Homestead and its rampant overdevelopment led by Bob Epling, the banker who gets the first word of the story. "This was all potatoes and corn. If you came here three years ago, that would be all you'd see, as far as the eye can see."

Homestead and Florida City are the Miami-Dade model of unsustainable growth. Period.

Homestead and its "vision" created an unmitigated disaster of infrastructure and pressure, converting the last open space in South Florida, bordering two national parks, into a misery of urban planning-- notwithstanding the fact that decision makers at the county, planning staff, citizen activists and leaders all understood exactly what was happening, when it was happening, as corrupt politics and insider-dealing by the likes of Steve Shiver, the "farm bureau", and well-paid lobbyists ran gleefully over common sense like a big-wheel 4 X 4 at a tractor show.

That, of course, is not the story told by The Herald except in a simple sentence buried in the middle of the story: "... many of the new homes are vacant because of the real-estate bust."

Apparently, the real story is the flood of new retail and big box merchandisers. No critical explanation that big retail, or any retail for that matter, relies on demographic studies to show that the consumer base exists.

The problem in Homestead cried then and cries now for credible reporting by The Herald.

All that housing in farmland was ginned up by fraudulent mortgage practices in the last phase of the building boom that ended in 2005. There was never, not a single instance, when The Miami Herald laid out for readers a coherent viewpoint about the path of unsustainable growth that is now inflicting enormous pain and consequences on the state of Florida.

Recall Florida City Commons? The Lennar project outside the Urban Development Boundary that was withdrawn but that had the temerity to press its plans into Biscayne Bay wetlands with NO objection from local leaders or the county commission.

Home buyers rushed to Homestead because of the illusion of cheap housing. One buyer, cited in the article, says he moved to Homestead because he could buy more home there, than in Kendall.

The Herald never, ever takes a position on this question that is central both to the housing market crash and the dim economic prospects of South Florida: where are the real jobs being created for people chasing "cheap" housing an hour or more from places of work? does it serve our region for homebuilders and bankers to be permitted to create "opportunities" for housing which only represent the shifting of an existing market from one locale to another because of the illusion of "low cost"?

How much of the infrastructure burden of roadways and schools and wastewater is born by county taxpayers, including inner city residents, in order to subsidize "making a home in Homestead"?

This model that ginned up plenty of real estate advertising revenues for The Miami Herald has been a fiscal disaster.

That is the story of Homestead and Florida City. It spawned a crop of insider-dealing that wrecked public policy in Miami and Miami-Dade county, and it mostly happened mostly without comment by The Miami Herald (with the notable exception of Jim Morin's editorial cartoons).

Oh well: that's enough for Monday morning! There is still the rest of the week for readers who come here, to get a point of view that gets oxygen from the internet.