Is Hialeah WASTING HUD money? By Geniusofdespair

Four million plus dollars to acquire a 1/2 acre parcel and build 18 to 22 units of affordable housing on it. Sounds Expensive to me. Here is the history of selling price for the property:

The land was sold as a 3 parcel package. The one considered for the affordable housing is assessed at $100,000. The other two pieces are assessed at $107,000 and $44,000.

Here are the top officers of the Corporation owning the Property (Spinal Cord Living Assistance):

 

The 1/2 acre:

Maybe we have to start looking at affordable housing. I talked to an affordable housing developer and he thinks $4 plus million is not out of line for that many units. They say this is the only property available. I doubt that. I think there is something wrong with the system.  Does affordable housing really work?

Obama on Syria: Doing the right thing ... by gimleteye

The Obama White House made the case on intervention in Syria, and the President listened to the public response. Good for President Obama -- too -- for making Congress take a stand. A debate in Congress -- especially one that grinds along partisan lines -- might embolden Assad to unleash more chemical attacks on Syrians. If that happens, American voters will have to take a stand, too.

There are no good options in the Middle East for the United States. There are terrible limits to the work of drones and air power that only appear to provide a measure of distance between taxpayers and their investment in the military. Give the risks, including the risk of doing nothing, President Obama made the right decision to involve Congress.

More On Lynda Bell's Affordable Housing for Seniors in Cutler Bay. By Geniusofdespair

It  was a surprise to me to find out that Bell had so much power to spend $10.5 Million of bond money. Her aide Eddie said: "After many presentations/solicitations Commissioner Bell made the decision to proceed with this project specifically." I suppose I should have made a presentation for a affordable housing/blog office. I could easily spend that much money. I wonder if Bell got to award the contract to this specific developer: Cutler Bay Center Associates, LLC, her landlord on her district office.

This appears to be an ongoing story coming in drips and drabs. I never knew how the bond money that you stupid voters approved was allocated (I never vote yes on bonds). This is a revelation to me that County Commissioners have so much control over the money and they have $137.7 million between them to spend on housing projects. Here is more on the Lynda Bell affordable housing project named after her mother in Cutler Bay (also see 2 posts yesterday):

Found This Budget in Resolution 582-12 Cutler Bay Center. (when at link hit on clerk's official copy to see the whole 70 page agreement.)

The maximum that a one bedroom apartments will rent for is $750 and the two bedroom will rent for $850.


I like the way they call it "elderly" housing in the resolution. I didn't know 55 years old was elderly. Let's be clear, I was only looking at Lynda's deal. The other County Commissioners are also doing similar things with bond money. I want to see how they all pick their developers.

Eddie Borrego's Response to Post About Bell. By Geniusofdespair

Chief of Staff to Lynda Bell:

Thanks in advance for your request for response.

In fulfilling your request (I NEVER MADE ONE, MY EMAIL WAS FORWARDED, BUT I AM HAPPY TO HAVE THE INFORMATION EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T ADDRESS HOW THE DEVELOPER WAS PICKED), please allow me to provide you with the brief, yet thorough, response below:

The Board approves equal GOB affordable housing fund allocations and its associated contracts to all 13 commission districts by resolution. The funds may be awarded to grant recipients to fund affordable housing projects as required by the bond question approved by the voters. The projects must be maintained as an affordable housing project for at least 25 years. In addition to execution of a grant agreement between the county and the grantee, the owner/grantee is required to record a rental regulatory agreement, a covenant running with the land, requiring the owner to maintain affordable rents throughout the 25 year term. The transaction is subject to underwriting review and a favorable underwriting report.

The process used in this case is consistent with the process followed by the majority of the County Commissioners, most of which have already allocated their district specific funds. After many presentations/solicitations Commissioner Bell made the decision to proceed with this project specifically based on the lack of senior services and programing in Commission District 8 as compared to other districts, location of land as part of the county government services corridor (located next to the South Dade Cultural Arts Center, public transportation, South Dade Police/Fire Department, South Dade Branch Library, South Miami-Dade Government Center, Social Security Administration, SouthLand Mall, etc.) and maximization/best use of dollars for this type of project.

Please feel free to contact me if you need further clarification.

The Mayor's Office Clarifies the Lynda Bell Affordable Housing Naming Story. By Geniusofdespair

PLEASE READ RESPONSE TO THIS POST PROVIDED BY LYNDA BELL'S OFFICE

The Marilyn Hope (named after Lynda Bell's mom) Affordable Housing building (said to be a community center in a press release) is shrouded in mystery because a stupid aide didn't know what he was talking about.  I expressly relied on his information in my post. So I have no regrets. If they can't get their story straight, I can't mine straight either. As I suspected we were giving money over to a developer and the county would not own the building as Lynda's aide told the Miami Herald. And we don't own the land either. We just supply our money.

Photo from the South Dade News Leader

Underlined and in bold are the Mayor's office responses to my questions, they were quick with these answers:

The Corporation CUTLER BAY CENTRE ASSOCIATES LLC bought the land from another Corporation CUTLER BAY CENTER LLC in 2012 (same officer) for $1 Million (Cutler Bay Center LLC had paid $2 Million for this land in 2006, including another tract, and subdivided it). The land is at 11000 11150 S.W. 211th Street, where Bell dedicated an affordable housing building. The parcel has not been subdivided since the 2006 purchase.

We are putting $10 1/2 million of bond money to build a building on a piece of land owned by a developer? Yes. The building will be owned by the county (according to lynda's aide) see Miami Herald article quote.

What is this guy getting for his land? See County Resolution 58-12, (hit on clerk's official copy on right side of page). Is the county leasing it? No. Did anything go out to bid on the contractor building it (Siltek) or on the land where it is going? This is a question for Cutler Bay Centre Associates, LLC, Andy Atrio, Jr. I see there is a name in the resolution of a contractor. Did he bid on this?  What is going on with this deal. Was there ever a resolution about the land and/or the contractors? See County Resolution 58-12. And the naming?  See County Resolution 582-12 (hit on clerk's official copy on right side of page). I don't think the mayor would let go of $10 1/2 million without some vetting. Were all the necessary agreements referred to in the resolution agreed to? If so may I obtain a copy? Resolutions R-58-12 & 582-12.

The parcel of land is owned by Bell's landlord, Atrio, of her district office.

Also how did the naming of the building, paid for with public funds, come about, to be named after Bell's mom? The owner, Cutler Bay Centre Associates, LLC, named the building. Was there a resolution? No, because the building is not owned by the County. 

From Resolution R-582-12 Sponsored by Lynda Bell

So even though Lynda Bell's spokesperson Maurice Hernandez told the Miami Herald that the County would OWN the building, they will not. We gave $10.5 million dollars of bond money to a developer for a building we don't own, on land we don't own.

Following is the first 3 pages of the 70 pages + agreement with Cutler Bay Center Associates. Is the Developer of this building even an affordable housing developer? The guy is, of course, Lynda Bell's landlord on her Palmetto Bay office but what else? Apparently someone wanted them to get this contract, and they did get it. I still can't determine if any bidding went on, Here is the response from the Mayor's office:

"As you may recall, there are 13 departments/divisions not under the Mayor’s purview. The Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners (BCC) is one them. While staff does execute legislation and projects, if the legislation or project(s) is sponsored by a Commissioner, the Commissioner is the lead.

The below contract was sponsored by a Commissioner, therefore my colleague in the BCC will assist you. I’ve copied Mr. Eddie Borrego, (305) 375-5218, in Vice Chairwoman Lynda Bell’s office on this correspondence. He will assist you with your follow up questions."

Here are the 3 damn pages or you can read the whole thing at the two links given above:

On Casino Capitalism... by Gihan Perera

Gihan Perera of the Miami Workers Center is an occasional blogger for the Huffington Post. The Workers Center has emerged over the past several years as the brightest spot in Liberty City, establishing a new power base for African American activists and is taking the lead on public involvement in the redevelopment of Scott Carver housing; if George Burgess will listen. Here's what he recently published:

Beware False Profits

Miami was where it started: the easy financing of endless high-priced condos without a clue of who would actually buy them. Ninety thousand of them were built on paper; bought, and traded in the Magic City before they were even completed. In the boomtown frenzy of quick cash, high flip rates, the entire housing market went crazy in the Sunshine State. Speculation got politicians drunk - Miami Mayor Manny Diaz was on the cover of magazines as his newfound economic engine heralded a renaissance of the city; the developers had saved us all. Ballooning property values fattened city and state budgets. With free flowing campaign contributions from high developers, the governor, the GOP controlled state legislature, and the complacent Democrats went along with drastic tax cuts that everyone knew would be devastating when the bubble burst. (click on 'read more')

Meanwhile, low-income communities were the canaries in the coal mine. At the height of the bubble, low-income black and immigrant communities were crying out about the disaster underneath. There was an affordable housing crisis by 2003, as home prices began skyrocketing and both state and private actors abandoned the preservation and production of low-income and moderate-income housing. More importantly, real income and real jobs were growing increasingly out of reach. There are no "real" jobs that can pay the bills, no wages that can send kids to college, no work that people can be proud of. While developers and bankers threw champagne parties on South Beach to celebrate the newly glitzy towers in downtown, the people of Liberty City, Overtown, and East Little Havana had hit the downturn first.

Globalization has finally caught up to America. What's left is a hollow de-industrialized economy in the heart land, and cities that were built on serving the global finance industry or producing media and entertainment that said it was all okay. The only standing industry is the military, and even that is overstretched and not quite providing the spoils that empire demands. For 30 years, the United States was heralded globally and convinced us internally that this strategy is flawless, that global free market fundamentalism is the solution for humanity. For three decades, in rhetoric and in aggressive policy, the U.S. has championed neo-liberalism where governments around the world were forced to cut social programs and taxes to allow corporations to run amok. And like in Miami, where developers were allowed to make mega profits without any investment back into community, where there was blind faith in the trickle down theories, the world saw poverty deepen while the few that were connected to speculation got fat.

Some have called this casino capitalism, and for America the game may be up. The position of the American worker shows the dilemma of U.S. capitalism. As workers' ability to make a living diminished, and social safety nets were cut, Americans' actual buying power shrank. Just as easy credit, allowed for the creation of condos that nobody could afford, borrowing filled the void that real wages once provided. People began using credit cards and taking loans at an unprecedented rate. This was not just people's choice it was official policy. The federal government fueled and encouraged loose credit, and finance institutions happily followed. Especially in working class communities that were strapped for cash, credit was loose. Cheap loans were financial crack in the community. The economic depression that is now coming was staved off through fake loans and fake money, but the longer and bigger that fictitious capital grew, the bigger the crash.

American capitalism is in trouble. After decades of deregulation, union busting, destroying social services, and saying that there is no room for 'big' government, the government is now going to spend more on the national financial bailout than any other government intervention ever. The financial bailout would be the largest government nationalization of an industry in the history of the planet. However, despite spending all that money, the government, and moreover, the public, are not going to own the banks. In other words, we are paying for nationalizing the financial industry without actually owning the assets that we're buying. While opposed to big government spending on education, housing, and social security, $700 billion is a free welfare check for banks and insurance companies.

In doing so, the government hopes to stabilize the credit industry in the short term with overwhelming capital infusion. However, covering all that fictitious capital does nothing to resolve the fundamental issues in the U.S. economy. There is a double bottom line. If the U.S. cannot produce something beyond movies and money managers, it cannot survive. The strategy of the U.S. being the managers of the world economy just went bankrupt. If working class people cannot buy homes, food, and energy, with money in their pockets and not through lines of credit, then there is no end to the crisis. The economy can only be saved through those nasty two words: spreading wealth.

It is time to flip the script.

The good thing about the bailout is that a $700 billion price tag to save the economy is now common. So, take that first $700 billion for the banks and double it. Make it $1 Trillion, or more, which must be invested in the incomes of normal folks to spark the economy. Scrap the trickle down philosophy that resulted in inflated CEO salaries while regular folks continue to suffer. Put the money directly in the hands of our people and our communities. It's that simple.

Second, halt all home foreclosures and evictions. The mortgage crisis is the largest loss of wealth in communities of color, ever. We must halt the rapid erosion of wealth and ensure the basic needs of people are met. Use the money to reestablish wealth in those communities through underwriting empty homes and producing more housing in the urban core. Give those assets to people and communities that have a long term interest in their use and prosperity. Bring social security to where there was speculation.

Third, and most fundamental to the long term, we must ground the economy in producing wealth and value. The emerging green economy can pave the way to producing wealth again. It is a way out of the double crisis we are facing: the economic crisis and the energy crisis of oil. Massive investments must be made where the housing crisis first hit: Black and immigrant low-income communities. Investing in job-producing green enterprise in our communities - recycling plants, alternative energy, and green building supplies - will ground us in wealth-producing infrastructure for now and the future. And this time, instead of just handing these assets over to greedy corporations and banks, we need to imagine a new era of community and publicly controlled enterprises where the jobs, knowledge, and wealth stay in the community and serve the people.

originally posted: October 21, 2008 | 06:35 PM (EST)

Investigative journalism and the blogsphere, by gimleteye

The nation’s investigative reporters are in Miami for a conference, in time for The Miami Herald editorial by Michael Putney, “Local watchdogs struggle to survive.” In the editorial, Putney makes the case our democracy cannot survive without a strong and independent free press and print journalism, in particular, in the form of newspapers. From the blogsphere, we have made the same case.

Putney makes several other points I agree with: that the concentration of media within large corporations is a threat to the survival of journalism, that declining advertising has forced reductions in staff and the capacity of newspapers to deliver the news for which the free blogsphere cannot substitute. Except.

Except that newspapers like The Miami Herald have failed to acknowledge to their readers how they have contributed themselves to loss of readership by swerving and dodging some of the toughest issues affecting our daily lives—like the origin of the housing crash, for instance. If you were to read The Miami Herald only, and not observe the goings-on as we are able to freely do on the blogsphere, you would think that the housing crash sprang from thin air, like spontaneous creation.

Even today, The Herald has been careful to the point of invisibility on the matter of explaining the origin of the housing market chaos that is wrecking and impacting so many people.

The bubble and crash that wraps up the political and economic elite of Miami was never reported in The Miami Herald because top managers of the paper were either too close to business leaders in the community, or, too concerned for the effect of negative coverage of the housing boom on its advertising base. This is not a point of nuance but central to the problem of the mainstream media: how often have presidential candidates, for instance, been asked by journalists to explain their views on the housing crash, what circumstances and politics lead to it, and what is reasonably to be done?

This issue-- the current state of our economy-- is going to define the election in November, and yet mainstream newspapers who had been asleep at the switch during the housing boom and AWOL on the issue, even today.

Maybe an even better example of where newspapers have failed their readership: reporting out the vapid politics of Detroit and gasoline; a core US industry that put the entire economy at risk when it chased down SUV's. Newspapers have been notoriously silent about criticizing the automotive industry, another key part of their revenue stream.

Putney is right on the mark, when he says that what should concern readers most is the loss of a newspaper’s capacity to publish investigative journalism related to that “sweetheart deal on a government contract, thanks to generous contributions to the mayor’s last reelection campaign.”

Many Miami Herald readers believe that the newspaper shies away from bad news stories, or negative portrayals of power, and that it is not the watchdog that it could be.

For instance, at eyeonmiami, we have focused on the issue of the relationship of the Urban Development Boundary to the nasty politics of the housing boom and crash in far greater detail than any mainstream publication. True, The Miami Herald has taken strong stands on the overarching UDB issues, but it has avoided an in-depth and consistent review of pressures of overdevelopment, advancing the fiscal irresponsibility that has turned our region as some would say, into "the Rust Belt of Florida".

We have identified, for instance, the patterns of land ownership adjacent to the dreams of big developers to plow more platted subdivisions in open space, farmland, and Everglades buffer areas and their relationship to the power structure in Miami Dade. These facts disclose the underlying power structure in a way that The Miami Herald will not do. So it is off-base for Putney to claim that stories of importance “can be ferreted out only by an experienced local reporter who’s got the talent, time and resources to nail it down.” It is not exactly the case.

We have been much tougher on rock miners, for instance, than The Miami Herald ever has. And we have specifically criticized the close, long-term relationship between the paper and Big Sugar, whose paid media professionals include former Herald executives like Joanna Wragg.

So, writing from the blogsphere; I feel torn. Torn exactly the way Leonard Pitts, the Herald’s outstanding columnist feels today, in the editorial next to Putney’s. Pitts is writing about his anger that former White House press spokesman Scott McCellan has now come clean in a tell-all book savaged Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism expert at the time, “a man who did have the integrity to speak truth to power in the moment when it mattered”. McClellan, today, is only now admitting to the truth we have all known for years; that this White House is the most dishonest, disheartening expression of failed national leadership we have known in our lifetimes.

Pitts writes, “You may think that’s harsh. I think there are few things less satisfying than being validated in what you already knew, too late to make a difference.”

This is what I feel, on some days, about The Miami Herald. Not all days, because when strong investigative journalism does make the front page, like the House of Lies series on corruption in local public housing, my subscription to The Herald is validated. But there is way too much of importance that is buried in the B section or letters to the editor or Neighbors, a section tailored to specific zip codes.

In too many instances of importance, like the housing crash affecting so many South Floridians, the news should have been delivered with forcefulness even if it crossed the interests of production homebuilders, furniture sales, and so forth. Exhibit A: the way Homestead and Florida City--the last rural community in South Florida--with open space, farmland, and buffer lands to the Everglades was wrecked by political insiders/ developers. Or, when has the newspaper ever criticized Florida Power and Light for its efforts to permit new nuclear power at Turkey Point absent any critical analysis of how the units will be cooled and where the water will come from, at a time of chronic water shortage and drought.

I appreciate Putney’s observations, the same way I appreciate Ed Wasserman’s contribution to the public dialogue about the future of print journalism, but I’m not entirely convinced. And my skepticism is joined by so many others.

The case must be made, as many are making, that the life of newspapers and the survival of democracy depends on a financial formula that does not fall back to the short-term needs of Wall Street investors and financial engineers.

Again, as I have written before, the best model for journalism’s survival is ownership by non-profit foundations: that is the reason the St. Pete Times consistently outperforms its rivals.

The blogsphere is not a replacement for print journalism, but what the blogsphere can provide is a balance that newspaper executives are too timid to acknowledge for fear of tipping the scales under perilous economic conditions. Is eyeonmiami doing a better job in the blogsphere of representing that balance? I think so. Yes. And it is doesn’t make me feel any better, for saying so.

Oscar Rivero: Investigators “Don’t F—K This One Up!! By Geniusofdespair

Here is one big fat chance in a lifetime and you just know it is going to get F—ked up. You just know it. Oscar Rivero, if you remember, was an affordable housing developer caught up in the “House of Lies” scandal uncovered by The Miami Herald in an award winning series. In today’s Herald it was said he gets 21 months in jail. However, this very savvy Circuit Court Judge Ellen Venzer, according to the Herald’s reporter Scott Hiaasen:

“... actually sentenced Rivero to 10 years in prison, a sentence she will reduce when he surrenders for prison on June 6 -- after he spends the next month giving information to investigators.”

Thank you Judge, I could kiss you, because we know there are bigger fish to fry like the County Commissioners. I don’t care about this little fish.

The article said:
“In the years before his arrest, Rivero had forged strong ties among the power brokers at County Hall.“

We need to finally know about these power brokers and how they operate. For instance, how do they influence our County Commission? How do they funnel money (paper or plastic), who are the "Bag Men/Women," etc.

We also have to thank Prosecutor Richard Scruggs:

“...Scruggs said he was prepared to file additional charges against Rivero for his role in other deals, but agreed not to arrest Rivero in those cases -- which Scruggs declined to describe in detail -- as long as Rivero agreed to cooperate as a witness.”

A word to these phantom investigators: So let’s not F—k up for once! Let’s get this guy, Oscar Rivero, to spill his guts and make him tell us how the system works. Above all, be sure he names some names, we all know they are out there. If he doesn't, give him the full 10 years!

P.S. Remember, water-boarding is not torture.

Sarnoff's real estate bailout, NO WAY: by gimleteye

"The commissioner says if prices dip as low as $175 per square foot, government should purchase condo units and partially subsidize them for teachers, police officers and the like."

Why? Why shouldn't condo towers be ordered to fail, that should never have been zoned and permitted in the first place?

Why pile the sins of socialization on top of the greed of the "free" market? I can't wait to hear all the Castro-baiting Miami developers take a firm stand against government bail outs for failed buildings.

"Nobody wants to see buildings fail," chimed in Miami state representative Carlos Lopez-Cantera. Really?

Why?

Taxpayers have been victimized. First, victimized by local legislatures and lobbyists who piled ill-advised development in the city and county, far in excess of historic norms with little to no planning for infrastructure costs.

Now, taxpayers are to victimized by the development lobby, again, to pay for its terrible investment decisions?

No way. It's called the free market, LBA.

Let the market determine where the bottom is for condos whose ownership fees and maintenance costs will continue to be a massive thorn in the side of owners.

If you want to help poor people, that's another thing: help them in the communities where they live, not in condos converted to be warehouses for bad zoning decisions.

If you want to help underpaid government workers, a hand-out would be better than bailing out the developers who have caused so much pain in our communities.

It's THEIR bed. They made it, and they should sleep in the bed they made, just like anyone else.

Bail out bankers, condo developers, and builders? NO! by gimeleteye

I was taking out the trash this morning and thinking about Max Rameau’s public letter—condemning the idea of selling off excess condo units for “affordable” housing (read the entire letter in the post section of the post, below, "Opportunity for political change in US housing market crash")—and it suddenly occurred to me why county commissioner Joe A. Martinez is considering a run at Miami-Dade county mayor.

In The Miami Herald on Sunday, Martinez said that he might run if certain roadway and parks projects were completed. Well, he sure has his priorities for public consumption down, I thought to myself taking out the trash.

In fact, were Martinez to run—he would run as the candidate designated by the builders and developers to bail-out their industry in Miami-Dade—collapsing under the worst market conditions in Miami since binder boys flipped land titles on downtown street corners. That would have been, around 1911.

Isn’t it interesting how the free-market Cuban American elite from the building industry, who hate Castro, would now be for socializing the costs of the housing crash?

Here is how it works with South Florida builders and developers: you couldn't get a word in, edge-wise, about the terrible zoning decisions that have scarred the South Florida landscape in order to enrich builders and developers, but now that their businesses are losing hundreds of millions, they want a bail out.

Here is what I say: no bail outs. Period.

Martinez has been shopping around the idea, for a long time, that vacant condos and houses might be good purchases by a public entity in order to resolve the affordable housing crisis.

Many months ago when the Miami Dade House Agency imploded Eyeonmiami speculated that a federal takeover—under the supervision of former Latin Builder member and now Assistant Secretary of HUD, Orlando Cabrera—would take the form of rescuing the same builders and developers who pushed suburban sprawl into wetlands and continue to dominate city and county commissions.

I agree with Rameau, an African American civic activist who has distinguished himself by his independence from old line leadership in the African American community: the last thing in the world Miami should agree to, is bailing out the banks, the developers and builders who created the housing crisis in the first place.

Subsidized housing in the downtown corridor would be an unmitigated disaster. It is already a mish-mash of commercial retail and residential landscapes, built without reason or common sense.

Instead of fostering incremental change and slowly building downtown audiences for residential living, it did what any coke addict would do when confronted with the choice of just a single line or taking the whole baggie stuffed with white powder. That's the Miami way.

So now you have tens of thousands of residential units coming on line, with no tenants or owners other than the banks buying titles from busted sales at a furious clip, and the best idea is to bail-out the builders by piling thousands of “affordable” tenants there?

Rameau is right, again, when he suggests (I don’t think entirely seriously) that it would be better to just buy out people’s homes where they live now, and re-sell them to people at half price. What’s the difference? None, except that in Rameau’s hypothetical example—no bankers or builders benefit.

As a final comment (I won’t speculate on the rumor that Cabrera recently resigned from HUD and where he might pop up next, if that is the case) I want to point out that we are about to see, in downtown Miami, exactly how pitiful the argument is, that growth pays its own way.

All the costs for fire, police protection, waste and water infrastructure necessary to accommodate those tens of thousands of empty condo units are going to be paid for by existing taxpayers in the Roads, Shenandoah, Little Havana, Coconut Grove, Morningside—you name it. And how much more will those services cost, and who will pay, if suddenly those tens of thousands of condos become “affordable”?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But as to the question, whether Joe Martinez is a qualified candidate to be county mayor: are you kidding?

YES! to The Miami Workers Center and LIFFT, by gimleteye

A new power center is emerging in the African American communities of Liberty City and Overtown: it is called The Miami Workers Center and Low Income Families Fighting Together (LIFFT).

These grass-roots organizations are doing best what grass-roots groups can do: organize on behalf of the powerless for positive change, person by person, door to door.

“There is an epidemic of greed at work here,” Tony Romano told a crowd of appreciative residents, frustrated by the age-old problem of slumlords in their neighborhoods and government inaction. The story appears on the front page of The Miami Herald Metro Section, “Slum-Sluggers” and a local news segment on WLRN.

Romano’s comments were directed specifically to the issue of affordable housing for the poor.

But the same greed runs straight through the political elite of in Miami Dade county. That’s not what it’s called at County Hall: a strange culture where little diverse opinion seeps in and where profit is held up to the be the highest virtue even among the God-fearing. No wonder the poor suffer most.

Occasionally the pestilence rises to the surface, as it does today on The Miami Herald front page: “Lobbyist gets house arrest in plea deal.”

The Sandy Walker plea deal is notable. Walker is the cornerstone of a family trio of African American powerbrokers, including the county commissioner Barbara Jordan and Florida City mayor Otis Wallace.

Together they worked hard in 2004-2006 to pass zoning changes that would have doubled the size of Florida City by wedging a new Lennar development into Biscayne Bay wetlands outside the Urban Development Boundary. They led a coordinated effort to by-pass local, state and federal environmental laws—playing one regulatory jurisdiction off another in a monumental, money, energy consuming waste of time.

The project was born in the exuberance of the building boom and was so outrageous, so clearly inappropriate to the location, it was bound to fail if only because of environmental and water supply concerns. Until the collapse of the housing market, all systems were “go”. (Today, Lennar is persisting in pushing for a massive development outside the Urban Development Boundary in far West Dade that requires approvals and funding a CSX rail line for public transit: a holy war now led by former county chairman Joe A. Martinez, whose relation to the development lobby is well documented by The Miami Herald.)

In the case of Florida City Commons, the prospective profit was so enormous, all hands were called on deck to make this pie in the sky dream possible, and in particular, the surrounding neighborhoods that are primarily poor African American.

In a Florida City annexation public hearing, The Miami Workers Center made a prescient point: that county commissioners were trying “to pit brown against green”; that is to say, poor people against environmentalists.

Of course, it appeared not to phase the county commission at all that the proposed Florida City Commons would have little to no benefit to the poor and the needs of affordable housing they claimed to represent.

In relation to Florida City Commons, Sandy Walker, Barbara Jordan, and Otis Wallace demonstrated how and why African American leadership concentrates on problems that have more to do with their own power than the needs of poor African Americans. Of course, arguments to the contrary are all wrapped up in the fiction that expanded tax base serves all needs.

The lure of millions of dollars on engineering and lobbying and lawyering fees was irresistible, as it had been a decade earlier with the planned conversion of the nearby Homestead Air Force Base to a private commercial airport, to benefit powerful members of the Latin Builders Association board of directors, reconstituted as HABDI. In that case, too, African American leaders and lobbyists from the urban core were called forth, for their cut of the action. (Notably, Congresswoman Carrie Meek sat on the sidelines, allowing US Senator Bob Graham to do the heavy work trying to push the air base conversion past federal laws.)

Both projects were promoted as a multi-billion dollar benefits to those of economic need and used the poor and disenfranchised as pawns in the zoning and permitting game. Both were supported by African American county commissioners. (Arthur Teele was the notable exception in the case of the HABDI deal, involving a massive political gamble on his part.)

Consider what the focus on Florida City Commons did not do for affordable housing: Barbara Jordan spent more than a year huddled with Lennar and the South Florida Builders Association, in private, designing a formula for a mandatory affordable housing ordinance—a carrot to push through county approval of the project at a time when her constituents in her own district were being neglected, drowned by fraud and corruption at the Miami Dade Housing Agency.

When the details of the Jordan affordable housing ordinance finally emerged, they described “affordable housing” that would mainly benefit developers of production home builders in tract housing developments, not in the urban core. (Today, after the Florida City Commons and Urban Development Boundary applications crumbled, the “affordable housing ordinance” emerged from the influence of the South Florida Builders Association and Latin Builders Association as ‘voluntary’, not mandatory: a sad, pathetic detour from what housing experts around the nation know to be a fact: that mandatory affordable housing is the only way to assure that developers will commit to this important public purpose.)

Eyeonmiami has written frequently and scathingly about the weak and ineffective leadership in the African American community, notwithstanding legends and icons and charismatic leaders.

It has revealed itself in serial scandals afflicting the poor most: Umoja Village, Scott Carver redevelopment, Poinciana Biotech Park, the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, the Miami-Dade Transit and the Miami-Dade Housing Agency. And that’s just in the past year. You don’t have to go back much further to see the same at work: in lobbying scandals at Miami International Airport and Opalocka Airport, for instance, involving African American leaders.

The emergence of The Miami Workers Center and LIFFT is at the right time and in the right place.

Now that Sandy Walker has pleaded guilty to fraud with respect to insider dealings with the Empowerment Trust by submitting false tax returns, her plea agreement says that “she also must assist public-corruption prosecutors by ‘detailing her knowledge of and participation in the business of governmental relations in South Florida.’” We'll see about that.

More compelling may be her faith, if it is true. As publisher of The Gospel Truth, a community newspaper, Ms. Walker might want to consider being guided by Christian values.

But heart of the problem infecting African American leadership is not individual sin: it is the uneven, unequal, and disturbing balance between the African American community and the Cuban American power elite in Miami and Miami-Dade. (Reflected in television cameras on election night in 2006, with Dorin Rolle, an African American county commissioner who pulls down a salary of more than $175,000 per year from a non-profit that received county funds, surrounded by fellow county commissioners Natacha Seijas, Joe Martinez, and Pepe Diaz.)

The African American community has always been on uneasy terms with the dominant political class, Cuban American businessmen who quickly transformed themselves from Cuban exiles to Miami’s leaders by manipulating municipal and county contracts and manipulating zoning authority and building permits.

The weight of segregation in Florida was not lifted by the rapid rise of this elite. For decades African American communities in Miami have languished.

Still, the Cuban American elite was pragmatic: they knew power had to be shared and that the best way to do this was to support an African American elite in exchange for their support for zoning decisions in outlying areas ripe for suburban sprawl.

The prize has always been real estate development in the suburbs, to serve a rapidly growing Hispanic middle class. It remains the focal point of wealth creation, even today, in the midst of the worst housing market collapse in a century.

Even now, African Americans on the county commission can be counted on for affirmative votes to support suburban sprawl in other commissioners’ districts. (Let's see what happens with the Lowe's application to move the Urban Development Boundary, in November.)

What do African American county commissioners care, so long as developers who benefit support their incumbency get what they want out west?

This power sharing relationship gives African American public officials a piece of the pie. It allowed Barbara Carey Shuler, a protégé of Carrie Meek, to maintain leverage and influence in the county, even to be appointed county chair, and in the award of contracts at MIA.

In the last twenty years, the single elected official who tried to resist this disastrous formula for power sharing was Arthur Teele—who paid a very heavy price for trying to cut his own path.

There is nothing secret about the formula: it is the gospel truth.

Let's hope Miami Workers Center and LIFFT can find a new generation of African American leaders. Imagine that.

Screwed again: the poor in Miami-Dade County by gimleteye

The outstanding investigative series by The Miami Herald discloses flagrant and rampant abuse of funding meant to benefit the poor--primarily African Americans--through the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, a nonprofit founded to help create jobs in Miami-Dade County's poorest neighborhoods.

The series amplifies "The House of Lies" by the Herald, which garnered a Pulitzer prize and focused on fraud and corruption at the Miami Dade Housing Agency.

A question arises: if it is not simple incompetence, corruption or ignorance that has victimized poor African Americans in Miami time and again, under the rubric of government supervision, what is it?

Again, as with the Miami Dade Housing Agency scandal, the arm's length pushback by County Manager George Burgess is telling. Given the implosion of the Miami Dade Housing Authority--and his office's failure to anticipate the problems--you have to wonder what is at work when he notes as "odd", the dual roles of the former trust president, Bryan Finnie at the same time head of the county's Office of Community and Economic Development.

Here is what I think is at work, and I've written about it before in context of the 'hands-off' treatment of the county housing agency that led to the "House of Lies": the Cuban American majority on the county commission, dominated by Natacha Seijas, has made its deal with African American leaders-- we'll give you a piece of the action and won't bother you in Overtown and Liberty City, so long as you vote our way on issues that are important to us, like zoning changes in farmland that benefit our primary political base, the Latin Builders Association and associated land speculators and production home builders.

It is scarcely a secret, for instance, that Sandy Walker, lobbyist and sister of African American county commissioner (charged with fraud in connection with a loan from the Empowerment Trust) Barbara Jordan, has been a prime mover in zoning changes in Homestead and Florida City, where their brother is mayor--the area of the county that was fastest growing until the building boom crashed in cinders.

Seijas proudly boasts from the dias that she doesn't read The Miami Herald or pay attention to innuendo by the bucketful of ink. But apparently she does read Eyeonmiami.

Power is based, largely, on perception. It would be helpful for The Miami Herald to do more to clarify these matters, in connection with political power in which the interests of leveling the playing field for the poor are continually trampled underneath the stampede for wealth. This is not just a matter of ethical concern. In fact, the future economic viability of Miami--aside from as a playground for the wealthy--is at stake.

There should be no sacred cows when it comes to making these points clear: that solving the vast inequities in Miami Dade county is essential to a prospering region.

Eyeonmiami has written extensively how Miami Dade county is the power base for former Governor Jeb Bush.

The base is defined, mainly, by developers and land speculators who have invested millions in farmland--much of it outside the Urban Development Boundary in anticipation of zoning changes and compliance with state mandates for land use planning.

One of Bush's key Miami Dade loyalists, charged with coralling interests on behalf of that base, is Rodney Barreto--a former Miami policeman who became very wealthy as one of the lobbyists at the top of the county food chain. Barreto is also a developer and partner in speculative land investments outside the Urban Development Boundary. (As chairman of the Florida Wildlife Commission, his biography notes he chaired the 62nd annual US Conference of Mayors among other blue-chip achievements.)

It is telling that Barreto turns up in the Herald investigation as the only Cuban American to have taken a piece of the Empowerment Trust pie, in the African American community. (It's a shame that the Herald reporters did not disclose how much of a profit Barreto took down, after repaying the loan--for which the Trust failed to secure a mortgage--for a piece of property in the Wynwood neighborhood. That number will emerge, in time.)

The chairman of the board of the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, T. Willard Fair, is the one leader in the African American community who planted his flag, squarely, on the Republican political territory of Governor Jeb Bush.

Fair was a Bush appointee to the Florida State Board of Education and co-founder, with Jeb, of the Liberty Center Charter School, the first charter school organized in the State of Florida.

On April 1, 2007, the St. Petersburg Times ran a trenchant opinion piece on the charter school movement in Florida: "A decade after creating its first publicly funded charter school, Florida has turned a worthy educational experiment into a blank check for eager entrepreneurs. As a new report by the Orlando Sentinel suggests, the push for quantity has supplanted the pursuit of quality. And the students are the ones who suffer.

Just ask Don Gaetz, a Republican freshman senator and former Okaloosa school superintendent, about the transformation. "Charter schools were a movement," he told the Sentinel, "but now charter schools are an industry. They have lobbyists - they walk around in thousand-dollar suits, some of them" ... The sad reality is that because Florida has put more ahead of better, no one can say with clear authority just how well the students in charter schools are being served. In a state that so assiduously measures how each education dollar is invested and how each public school student performs, that's simply unacceptable."

But it is more than unacceptable.

You see, the frenzy of privatization and outsourcing--one of the mantras of Jeb Bush's tenure as governor (and, by no small coincidence, of the Bush White House in the performance of the federal government)--turns out to be a mean-spirited opportunity for personal gain and political power wrapped in a silken promise. That's the theme that runs through the Empowerment Trust scandal like a riptide.

When push comes to shove in the poorest parts of America, and especially where political power grows from scarcely concealed graft mixed with political gain, the results are clear as day. It's a tragedy and a tragedy for Miami. And that is an opinion you won't read in The Miami Herald.

Max Rameau, on The Miami Herald OPED page

Look. I don't know what Max Rameau did before Umoja Village became his cause, but it's enough for me that an African American emerged who is willing to stand up for principles, never mind what the status quo says.

There are two models for leadership: in one case, a powerful elite selects and promises to support someone for political office who, in return, is faithful to what they want. He or she doesn't have to be well-spoken, just able to follow a script. In the second case, a leader emerges from a cause that energizes voters: it could be good government, it could be a specific neighborhood issue. In this case, he or she must be resourceful and willing to stand up to the status quo.

Although Max Rameau has not run for public office, so far as I know, he is an example of the second model and one worthy of note in the African American community that has surrendered, over a very long period of time, to its bit-player role in the Miami-Dade political elite. (Arthur Teele is another story, in and of himself.)

Anyhow, here's some praise for Max Rameau and an acknowledgement of the important role of grass roots groups in the African American community: you do have the power, the causes, and the capacity to change political equations in Miami and Miami-Dade county.

I would reprint the full text of Max Rameau's OPED, but the Herald's website opinion page / special contributors is notoriously difficult to navigate and find. Maybe a reader can add it to the comments section...

Hud Takeover of Housing in Miami Dade County by Geniusofdespair

The question of the day. Should Hud takeover our corrupt, Housing Agency or is the person at the helm of Hud going to create an even worse situation? Does he really have a barbed wire soul like this poster suggests? Most of the money in the Agency is HUD money. I vote for the HUD takeover but I only know what I read in the paper. I saw Commissioner Audrey Edmonson standing next to the Mayor and I said to myself: "That just won't do. Nope." Hud for me over Audrey.

Stop Complaining. Big Deal: Benzene. by Geniusofdespair

This column is a recipe to fix problems (or appear that you are trying) in Miami Dade County. I am going to say what a lot of you are thinking but not saying. I have learned something from watching lobbyists, how to talk trash.

First and foremost always say to absolutely everything: We have to strike a balance. That makes the liberal or other position seem “unbalanced” at the get-go.

Economic Engines
Second, describe yourself as an “economic engine” when asking for a pass in Government. At all costs, we must not curtail economic engines. Ever! They include, but are not limited to: real estate development, rock mining, tourism, the port, energy production, road building and the airport. Stopping or limiting these engines in the name of drinking water, safety or clean air should be forbidden because economics always trumps health. For example this is the righteous argument for rock mining:

We need the hard rock that only Miami Dade can supply (makes Miami leaders feel special). That crappy rock upstate is too soft so there is no substitute, so we must put drinking water at risk to carcinogens to get that hard rock for more road beds. You wouldn’t want to stop road building would you? Roads are economic engines just like rock mining (now they have two economic engines). Finish off with: We must strike a balance. (Works well doesn’t it?).

More Arguments:
If we stop developers from always changing the zoning on land with the Florida Hometown Democracy Petition we will not have any new jobs in Miami Dade and you will have to go vote every other week on these changes. If we don’t let FP&L put two more reactors at Turkey Point you will have to run your house air conditioner at 80 degrees in the summer, if at all. It is nuclear or smelly, dirty coal. Take your pick. (Sounds like: cut off my finger or my toe?)

If you touch an economic engine scads of people will be out of work — especially African Americans and Hispanics. All those (minimum wage) jobs will disappear. The economy will come to a grinding halt. Unions will riot in the street and there will be chaos as people line up by the thousands at Walmart and Home Depot for "good" jobs.

We all know where to put the blame for scaring away more diversified businesses but we don’t talk about that. We don’t ever say the cost of doing business in the county with high priced lobbyists, etc. is the real reason we have limited job choices.

Above all don’t tell the tourists anything. We especially don’t tell them that almost all the fish in Florida have mercury advisories on them. We keep the beaches just clean enough so those horrific Board of Health signs don’t have to be posted and we truck in as much sand as possible so the tourists think it is a real "natural" beach.

Social Programs
We should not care about social issues. If we close our eyes, all these problem people will move away. We should not be concentrating on affordable housing because the people who need it are losers and if they won’t get a job, let them live on the street, or better yet, move. For all we care, they can join all the sexual predators that we already have living under that bridge. If they are working 40 hours a week making minimum wage, they are still losers. They should pick themselves up and get a job making more money. The fact that blacks have an unemployment rate of almost 15% in Miami-Dade (according to Dario Moreno, Ph.D.) only shows how they are not pulling up their boot straps correctly (and that scads of people are already out of work). The reality that most are not bi-lingual, in a job market that requires it, is of no consequence. Move.

We should abandon the public schools because “our” kids don’t go there. Our kids go to the publically funded charter schools which is a code for one race or ethnic background.

See, anyone can fix Miami. It ain’t rocket science.