Homestead/Florida City Foreclosures and Eyeonmiami. By Geniusofdespair

I think this is the first time Eye on Miami was mentioned in the Miami Herald! We have been writing since 2006. Miami Herald, are you pretending we don't exist? Note, it isn't even a Miami Herald story, it is AP.

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE, I JUST LOOKED AGAIN, THE HERALD CUT US OUT OF THEIR VERSION OF THE ORIGINAL AP STORY!!! HERALD: WHERE IS "...A POPULAR BLOG, EYE ON MIAMI." Here is what the Herald cut about our blog and Gimleteye (They actually crucified the article):


BLOGGING THE TRUTH
At 5:30 a.m. everyday, Alan Farago sits at his computer and tries to draw parallels between the housing crisis in Miami-Dade County and what's going on in Wall Street boardrooms and White House conference rooms.

Farago, who lives in Coral Gables — a suburb some 20 miles north of Homestead — co-writes a popular blog called Eye on Miami. Since 2006, he's rifled through public documents and detailed much of the mortgage fraud, banking shenanigans and corruption that preceded the area's economic meltdown.

"I ask myself: this is really depressing stuff. Who's going to want to read this?" he says. "Then I tell myself, someone has to lay out what has happened."

Farago moved to the Miami area from the Florida Keys just days before Andrew hit. He'd always been interested in the Everglades and Biscayne National Park — two national reserves that abut the southern part of the county — so during the rebuilding in the wake of Andrew, Farago went to planning meetings and spoke out against policies that encouraged suburban sprawl. He volunteered for a half-dozen responsible growth groups and was once involved with the state chapter of the Sierra Club, fighting to save the delicate Everglades wetlands.

His advice was ignored and thousands of acres were developed. For years, Miami-Dade County's entire economy was dependent on growth — growth that was dependent on a never-ending supply of sunshine, easy credit and new residents.
Now, Farago says, the entire country is paying the price.

"The whole of Miami's establishment prospered by the easy conversion of cheap land into suburban sprawl," he says. "It's the development pattern of South Florida that brought down the economy."

Farago places the blame of the housing crisis not only on banks, but on developers, lobbyists and — most of all — local officials who approved the projects in the first place.

"Florida's a place where the gears of the development machine were all perfected."

Link to the Entire Article