WCI Communities, Al Hoffman, Occupy Naples: where are they today? ... by gimleteye

While researching the politics of wetlands destruction this week, Al Hoffman, Jeb Bush's campaign finance chair and also finance chair for George W. Bush, came back into focus. Hoffman, once chairman of WCI Communities, was appointed by Bush to be chair of the Council of 100: the state's foremost business lobbying organization. During the early 2000's, the Council played a key role in advocating for the elimination of "burdensome regulations"; the mantra that reverberates today through Florida and national politics.

Hoffman's goal-- and the goal of Jeb's key supporters-- was to facilitate the development of production housing and condos on environmentally sensitive lands. Hoffman would later become Bush ambassador to Portugal. The company he founded, WCI Communities, and the source of his personal fortune, began its early foray into housing in South Dade through Keys Gate in Homestead.

Today Homestead, according to a recent Businessweek report, has the highest foreclosure rate of any city in the nation. From the Florida Turnpike, all one can see is a forest of housing developments where farmland once softened the approach to the Florida Keys and the Everglades. Since 2009, home prices in the Homestead area have declined by nearly half. In 2007, Silvio Cardoso-- a home builder in South Dade and prominent spokesperson for the production housing industry-- said to The Miami Herald, "... South Florida is "taking a rest" from an overheated marketplace." A market that was overheated, we know today, by political design. "It is a great time to buy a home," Cardoso said.

In 2006, WCI Communities declared bankruptcy. It was a sharp reversal from 2002 when Hoffman crowed to the Washington Post that suburban sprawl was "an unstoppable force". In February 2010 The Marco News reported that Hoffman's mansion in South Fort Meyers that had been for sale, was to be auctioned. The asking price had been as high as $17 million. The auction price was $5.1 million.

"This unique property has inspired ambassadors and presidents", the advertiser notes. If walls could speak, the Hoffman estate-- built in 1998-- would reveal much about the arrogance behind the housing boom and the politics and money that propelled Jeb to the governor's mansion that same year.

What is really beyond the pale, though, is the appeal to nature as a chief attribute of the property: "One of the most romantic places to live is where your heart sings in harmony with nature".

There is also a youtube video Hoffman made himself, to sell his mansion. "Many people have asked me why we picked (this place) to build our home. ... we were drawn specifically to this area because the waters are the most pristine of any I can think of ... (it) creates an ideal environment for all the kinds of wildlife and fishing that people think of, when they think of Florida."



Listen and remember the ways that policies advocated by Jeb Bush, Hoffman and the Council of 100 helped to destroy regulations protecting Florida's communities from over-development. For example, as detailed in its 2005 report, a St. Pete Times investigation showed that "Between 1999 and 2003, (The US Army Corps of Engineers) approved more than 12,000 wetlands permits and rejected one."

Hoffman's legacy is playing out to this day. The political pressure in Florida against federal environmental agencies like the US EPA and Army Corps of Engineers has never varied. It manifested recently with the Florida Chamber of Commerce and other pro-growth organizations successfully lobbying the US EPA to withdraw its proposal for numeric nutrient criteria for Florida waters. Nothing less than the same disaster anticipated by observers of the housing boom and its political origins in Florida.

The outlines of this disaster were detailed by the St. Pete Times and the Washington Post. But the most vivid and prescient documentation was from The Naples Daily News in its outstanding 2003 report: Deep Trouble, The Gulf Under Siege. (Sadly, the newspaper has not maintained the links to this important historic record. Development interests were angry with the paper for publishing the 15-part series, as they were with The Orlando Sentinal for publishing my editorials during the housing boom opposing over-development in Florida.)

Today, the Occupy movement includes a Naples branch. "They're upset about so much, they can't say just one thing," said one observer to the local newspaper. "People are holding different signs showing what's wrong. It's not just the war, it's the sales tax, it's the job cuts, it's everything." If people would only stop to read history, how "everything" became so difficult for Florida would be visible in stark relief.