Investigation into Miami Housing

For the last three months or so, I took a bit of a break from Cuba-related issues to investigate problems in the city of Miami's housing agency. The result of our investigation was published Sunday. If you live here and pay federal taxes, it's a must-read.

The package is accompanied by multimedia of all sorts: photos, video, audio, slideshows.

Comments

[Mambi Watch]

Great story, congrats on your work. Keep it up.

[leftside]

As someone who'sjob it was to study the affordable housing scene in Chicago, the problems cited are not all that unusual. Despite all the good reporting exposing these problems, the piece does little to point the way towards the real issues or solutions. The central problem, I believe, is the way we've outsourced housing since the 80s to idealistic, but financial shaky non-profits, who must operate in the world of for-profit real estate and construction markets. The Government no longer has a direct role in building anything and the curent system encourages waste and inefficiency.

Your piece seems to blame corruption (focussing on administrative costs) but the biggest waste comes from the very structure of most affordable housing deals, which require multiple source of funding (and lawyers and bankers taking fees at all points), including an incredibly inefficient housing tax credit program. Sure there are always people in the game not up to the (difficult) taks or doing it for the wrong reasons, but the root of everything is systemic. Small scale social service agencies became developers overnight and were expected to perform like big groups like Habitat...

[Mambi Watch]

Thanks for the insight Leftside.

[cubanpatriot]

A circle herk of communists. How quaint.