Displacements, evictions in Hialeah: Human tragedy of Miami-Dade’s housing crisis persists
Tenants of an apartment building located at 1501 W 42nd St. in Hialeah protested rent increases as much as $650 or 65%. Reports of rent increases across Miami-Dade have prompted County Commissioner Kionne McGhee’s proposal to study whether the county needs to impose rent controls on landlords. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com
However, in March the average rent in Hialeah for a studio apartment went up 18% to $1,150 a month. And the cost of a one-bedroom apartment rose 7% to $1,550 a month, while average rent for a two-bedroom place jumped 10% to $2,099, according to Zumper, an online rental platform.
“It would be reasonable to assume that the number of affordable and available units for Hialeah residents is rapidly declining as housing costs continue to rise,” Velarde said.
Consider Maria Rubi, who went from being a store cashier to a union leader after seeing her rent in the apartment building at 1501 W 42nd St. increase by $650 earlier this year. She and four others affected by the rent hike, have sued the real estate investment firm Eco Stone Group, who bought the property in December.
El Nuevo Herald contacted Eco Stone on several occasions, but the company did not return calls.
The five plaintiffs in the lawsuit requested $20,000 for each of the families, alleging psychological damage caused by the imminent eviction. “If they want us to move, then they should give us money to leave. We don’t have anywhere to move to, there aren’t even any apartments available,” Rubi said.
Eight of 20 tenants in the apartment building where Rubi lives are receiving help from the Hialeah mayor’s office to pay the $1,650 monthly rent for three months. Five other tenants accepted the rent increase, four moved, one is awaiting a court hearing over eviction and two haven’t asked the city for financial help.
“Particularly in cities like Hialeah, at least 20% of renters pay more than 50% of their income on housing, so if rents go up it would be really hard for them to maintain their lifestyle,” said Robin Faith Bachin, a history professor at the University of Miami specializing in urbanism and assistant provost for civic and community engagement.
In Hialeah, the home rental-cost burden represents an average of 67.9% of residents’ monthly income. That’s more than double the common recommendation by personal finance experts that people spend no more than a third of their monthly income on housing. In Miami-Dade, only Florida City residents, who pay 70.9% of income on monthly rent, are more financially strapped by rent than those living in Hialeah, according to the Miami-Dade Affordable Housing Blueprint: Needs Assessment.
FEW SOLUTIONS
“For me it’s impossible to pay the current price. I’m a single mother and I earn $14 an hour. How am I going to pay $1,650 just for housing?” Rubi said.
Although Hialeah started in February paying that rent for three months for eight families including hers, she said the temporary help is insufficient.
“It’s a Band-Aid to a serious problem,” said Rubi, the leader among the group of outraged tenants. “We need a permanent measure that works and helps us. We no longer feel at home in this building.”
Norma Uriostegui, a representative of the Miami Worker Center, a nonprofit that supports marginalized communities in South Florida, said that unfortunately, no matter how big a rent increase is there is no state law to avoid this situation. She’s advising the residents’ union formed in Hialeah.
The 2021 Florida statutes limit to a great extent the imposition of rent controls, unless there is an existing housing emergency serious enough to pose a significant threat to the general public.
However, several weeks ago Hialeah approved an ordinance to force the owner of a property who wishes to increase rent by 10% or more to notify tenants 60 days in advance.
Velarde is optimistic, considering that Hialeah has taken “a great first step (to avoid displacements) by passing the ordinance that requires notification of rent increases, but there must be a committed investment for both the preservation and the building of housing units,” she said.
Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo Jr. said in an interview the long-term solution for apartment rents is linked to the economic rule of supply and demand. “Right now,” he said, “the necessary supply doesn’t exist, not only in Hialeah, but in the county, and if government rules make it harder to build, those prices are going to keep going up.
“Rent control is not a solution because in the long-term those building owners are going to stop investing in their apartments and in that case, you’re creating conditions that are not desirable for a city,” the mayor said.
MIAMI-DADE LACKS AFFORDABLE HOUSING
The county’s affordable housing needs assessment shows that in Hialeah 12,796 affordable rental units are needed now for extremely low to moderate workforce income households and 6,614 houses that moderate workforce income households could afford to buy.
The report by Florida International University’s Jorge M. Pérez Metropolitan Center concluded there’s a lack of at least 119,751 affordable rental units for households with extremely low, very low and low incomes countywide, and about 135,120 houses that moderate, working and middle-income households could buy.
Carmen Cuzcano, a Peruvian immigrant, has lived in Hialeah for 32 years since she arrived in the United States. For the last 22 years, she has rented an apartment in the 1501 W 42nd St. building where Rubi lives. It is practically impossible for her family to pay the $650 increase they received in January. She earns $10 an hour or $400 a week. She is the head of her household that includes her 18-year-old son, who is still studying.
“We are not problematic. We are humble people who cannot pay that exaggerated rent increase,” Cuzcano said. “One of our neighbors has tried to move, but since she appeared with us protesting on a television now they don’t let her rent in other buildings. These last few months we have lived under too much stress, hardly sleeping, thinking about where we are going to move.”
LONG-TERM HOUSING AFFORDABILITY PLAN
Miami recently declared a public emergency due to the worsening housing crisis so the city can waive state bidding laws and speed up affordable housing projects under no-bid construction contracts. Earlier this month, Miami-Dade’s mayor followed with a countywide housing affordability crisis declaration.
Based on county population projections, if wage levels increase as they have in the past five years, and the number of affordable homes for households earning 80% of the median income continues to disappear at the same rate as today — more than 6,000 units per year — Miami-Dade will need to find, preserve and develop more than 11,000 affordable housing units annually over the next decade just to maintain the current portion of affordable homes, said Ned Murray, associate director of FIU’s Pérez center for economic and housing research.
In order to reduce and close the affordable housing gap, Murray said Hialeah and Miami-Dade must see this “as a long-term master plan (10 to 15 years), which establishes the goal to build and preserve between 1,000 and 1,500 units a year.”
Since 2013, only about 500 such units have been built a year in the county. Developers built most of them with low-income housing tax credits, under a program that provides tax incentives to encourage construction of affordable housing.
Julio Ponce, executive director of the Hialeah Housing Authority, said 83 affordable units for seniors were built last year. He expects by the end of the year construction will start on 86 more.
Ponce acknowledged these numbers are well below the affordable housing need in the city. But he said the main problem in Hialeah is the limited amount of land to build new homes.
“The vision is to have a government that makes it easier for developers to come to the city and demolish houses in some areas, to build affordable apartments that can be rented through subsidies,” the housing authority director said. “We have a new mayor with a very good vision.”
Although there are four affordable housing programs in Hialeah — including Section 8 vouchers — applications aren’t open for some of these grants.
Every four or five years, the city takes applications for the voucher program. Although about 50,000 people usually apply, only around 2,500 people get them, Ponce said.
Regarding public housing, Hialeah’s housing authority hasn’t had a lottery since 2008 for the apartments owned by the city, because there are no vacancies.
“We have enough people who have been waiting over 14 years for a unit,” Ponce said. “We don’t have new applications because we cannot offer more housing units.”
NEW HIALEAH DEVELOPMENTS FOR HIGH EARNERS
In recent years, modern residential developments have been approved in Hialeah. That might seem like an opportunity to reduce the city’s need for housing. However, the new homes are intended for residents with higher incomes.
While real estate projects such as Pura Vida Hialeah, Shoma Village, Station 21 Lofts, Height Westland and Metro Parc could change the local housing dynamic, UM professor Bachin said, “the housing units being built in the city don’t match the residents’ needs.”
MG Developer Miami will build a 10-story apartment rental building near the Hialeah Tri-Rail/Metrorail transfer station. A representation of the project. ARQUITECTOS MODIS
Alirio Torrealba, president of MG Developer, builder of the Metro Parc complex, said Hialeah has not traditionally been a target area for large apartment buildings.
“Vertical development was lacking, but with recent zoning changes we were able to start the city’s first 10-story project, with over 560 units on almost four acres of land,” he said.
For Torrealba, the Metro Parc homes are not really luxury, but “better quality” for younger residents who grew up in Hialeah, left and now returned.
His office ruled out that any units are intended to be priced as affordable housing.
The rents at Metro Parc, located near the Hialeah Tri-Rail/Metrorail transfer station, were originally planned to range from $1,150 to $1,840 a month. However, Torrealba said the housing market has been very volatile and the prices of building materials have changed, so when the project is ready in 2024 the monthly rents could exceed $2,100.
“While more houses are built without being directed to the local population, we ask ourselves what is going to happen to these tenants?” Bachin said. “When average rents go up, it’s going to be hard for people to stay in those homes.”
HIALEAH INCOMES LAG COUNTY MEDIAN
Cuzcano and Rubi are two of the many Hialeah residents struggling to cover their housing costs. Both are heads of households who live with their children. Their respective incomes don’t allow them to pay the pending apartment rent increase, which represents more than 100% and 71% of their total incomes.
The 2020 U.S. Census showed there were 76,459 households in Hialeah, with 32.2% of them led by females without a spouse and 15.1% with male heads and no spouse.
The median household annual income in the city was $38,471. Cuzcano and Rubi earn well below that figure, at $19,200 and $26,880, respectively.
According to the Census, 10.7% of Hialeah’s residents had incomes below $10,000 a year, 1.4% earned above $200,000 annually, and 19.6% of the community earned below the poverty line ($13,590).
Comparatively, in Miami-Dade, there were 902,200 households, with a median annual income of $53,975, the Census showed. An estimated 8.4% of the households had earnings of less than $10,000 a year, and 6.7% made $200,000 annually or more. Sixteen percent of county residents were below the poverty line.
Murray, the FIU housing expert, said residents’ incomes in Hialeah can’t keep up with housing costs, “leaving little income for basic needs — food, medicine, clothing — and no discretionary income for savings, entertainment, and vacations.”
Hialeah is considered a case study in the Miami-Dade Affordable Housing Blueprint: Needs Assessment because “its median income is lower than the entire county, it has a higher poverty rate, and has long been considered affordable because most housing is older than average,” UM’s Bachin said.