“If they don’t act on this crisis, the blood of the people is on their hands.”

By Rebecca Wakefield

The little graveyard of cardboard houses next to the Stephen P. Clark Center of Government Misappropriation in downtown Miami is getting wet. It’s a brightly colored cemetery of dashed hopes and we-expected-you-to-screw-us dreams, losing potency under the inescapable summer rain.    

Patricia Maldonado, community relations coordinator for the Human Services Coalition, jams an orange press folder in my hands as I stare at a milling assortment of affordable-housing protestors I fondly regard as the usual suspects. Noting my reaction, Maldonado relates how another reporter at the scene had dismissed the impact of the protest, saying, “But you don’t have any celebrities.”

Coincidentally, just blocks away and a few hours prior, this city’s biggest celebrity was putting on a show for the press to announce his entrée into the world of unaffordable housing. Miami Heat center Shaquille O’Neal, in well-dressed mogul mode, crossed the threshold into real estate development with his shotgun bride, MDM Development principal Luis Pulenta, literally cradled in his arms for the amusement of the photographers.

Next to the pair, the impressive model phallus of under-construction MetMiami loomed with the promise that Brand Shaq (aka the O’Neal Group) will add enough shine to the ambitious mixed-use condo project to convince buyers (and maybe lenders?) that $400,000 to $3 million is a reasonable unit price in a deflating market.

“The people here are lovely, they’re beautiful,” O’Neal said. “We just want to give them a better way of living.”

And that’s the scene. Quick cut to County Hall a few hours later, where a sea of T-shirts broadcasts the affiliations of various activists. Green PACT (People Acting for Community Together) shirts mingle with purple SEIU Local 11 shirts, orange LIFFT (Low Income Families Fighting Together), and white and orange FANM (Haitian Women of Miami) shirts. Among the various holy men present, the Rev. Douglas Cook of Jordan Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Liberty City, and my personal vote for the James Brown of local ministry, is dapper as usual in sharp pinstripes and a fat white tie.

Also on hand are the Miami Workers Center, Power U Center for Social Change, a few University of Miami students fresh from fighting for janitor rights at their school, and even Alan Farago, an environmental advocate doing a little payback for support many of these activists lent to the effort earlier this year to stop the westward drift of the county’s urban development boundary line.

These and other groups built a tent city on the lawn between the fountain and the public sculptures. They recruited people to sleep over and light candles in a vigil that would end the next afternoon in the County Commission chambers with a list of demands.

Here is the list: “The County-wide Coalition for Emergency Housing Relief calls for the following solutions to the housing crisis. 1. Create a countywide rental assistance voucher program. 2. Fill the vacancies in public housing. 3. Build new low-income housing, starting with the site earmarked for Crosswinds in Overtown. 4. Rebuild 850 low-income homes in the Scott Homes vicinity of Liberty City. 5. Support independent community oversight for accountable development.”

Paul Joseph, 68, but with the gleam of a much younger man in his eye, is one of many facing the reality of the housing crunch. Until recent heart and eye surgery put him out of action, he worked housekeeping and front desk details at a hotel near the airport. His rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Little Haiti is $600 and about to increase to $700. He doesn’t have the money.

Joseph adjusts his glasses and runs one hand along the perfect crease in his pressed pants. “I need help,” he admits, in soft and broken English. “I don’t say, ‘Give the people [housing] for free.’ But help people pay less.”

Caprice Brown, age 35, tells a story about how she lived in Scott Homes for nine years with her three children. When the county and federal HOPE VI project demolished the projects a few years ago, residents were scattered to the four winds with false promises of returning to new single-family homes. “We were tricked,” Brown accuses.

Residents were supposed to get vouchers for housing in other areas, but Brown says the county took hers away because she couldn’t make one appointment. “They called me at noon and said I needed to come in at 3:30 that day,” she recalls. “I told them it was impossible because I had to pick up my kids from school. [The county worker] put me on hold and then said, ‘My supervisor says you either come here today or you’re out.’”

Brown was out. Now she’s basically homeless, living with her three preteens in a relative’s extra bedroom. “This is pain,” she says, anger making her brown eyes almost as burnt orange as her short dreads.

At the mike, FANM leader Marleine Bastien leads a standard call and response chant. “Who will stand up for the poor?” she asks. “Who will stand up for affordable housing?”
Maybe not Shaq, but plenty of other people. Miami does not have a strong, continuous tradition of activism, but I think I see the beginning of something new. The leaders so far are mostly women who have been nurtured and coached by community activists who moved to Miami for that purpose.     

These women are angry, convinced the powers that be don’t want them, want to drive them out of their neighborhoods. Brown is a perfect example, but hardly the only one. She felt hopeless about her situation until somebody told her to talk to the Miami Workers Center.

Miami Workers Center activists put her in front of the County Commission and TV cameras, where she found voice and strength, and a means to fight for her own self-respect. You can see it when she grabs the microphone. Suddenly, she knows what to do. “If they don’t act on this crisis,” she says, pointing to the county building, “the blood of the people is on their hands.”

Cindy Wiesner, a Latina organizer from the West Coast who is working here to add the working-class Hispanic enclaves of Wynwood, Allapattah and Buena Vista to the struggle, smiles approvingly and takes the mike. “We’re starting a movement here,” she says, “a fight over who gets to live in Miami. They want to make Miami a Disneyland for the rich.”

Ah, but who will work the concession stands?