A Tale Of Two Latino Areas In Miami And San Francisco

[brickell]

Originally Posted by Bikemike

Miami's tremendous poverty and economic segregation is what's largely behind this "preservation" aspect of Miami's Latino neighborhoods, not some concerted and conscious effort to preserve them for some altruistic cause. That Miami is much more two-dimensional economically than SF and so you can't really draw any direct comparisons like this author is trying to do. The basis of their differing approaches to gentrification is completely rooted in fundamental differences in economic circumstance. I think that was his point in bringing that up.

This is as much a rebuttal of the article as it is to you. So don't take it personally.

I'm not going to argue that Miami doesn't have a poverty problem. It does. But Little Havana isn't particularly poor compared to other parts of the city or metro. In fact, most of the West Brickell area was indistinguishable from "Little Havana" not 10 years ago. With the latest boom, most of it has been bought up, emptied and built over.

Little Havana proper is gentrifying. It's got several mid range towers being built throughout the neighborhood now. It's slower than Brickell for sure, but it will get there eventually. Perhaps gentrifying isn't the right word. It's rising. It's getting "better". It's building... Little Havana is physically separated from downtown and Brickell by the Miami River and I95. I think it's an important mental barrier as well. Secondly, Brickell is served by Metromover and Metrorail. Little Havana is not. Brickell had a lot of large lot and commercial buildings already. Little Havana does not.

And again, all of Miami is ethnic. Even Brickell. Brickell is whiter (more gringo) and a place you don't need spanish on a daily basis, but it is a place that you will hear a lot of it anyway. But further, people being displaced from West Brickell, Little Havana, Wynwood, what have you, have many other options for places to live comfortably. This doesn't seem to be true for SF's ethnic neighborhoods.

Most of all and as others have mentioned, Miami's gentrification pressure has been north of downtown in Overtown, Wynwood, Midtown and the bayfront neighborhoods along Biscayne Blvd. These neighborhoods (perhaps just as ethnic as Little Havana is) are being razed by the day for some pretty disgusting towers if you ask me.

That Little Havana isn't gentrifying as fast is just an accident of geography. It's got nothing to do with poverty or difference in economic circumstance.

[dave8721]

Miami is moving to up-zone parts of Little Havana while preserving a small 2 block area as "historic":

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/li...-worry-6527000

LITTLE HAVANA COULD BECOME "BRICKELL WEST," LOSE BLUE-COLLAR HISTORY, ACTIVISTS WORRY

A battle is brewing for the soul of Miami's most iconic neighborhood.

Little Havana, the spiritual home of the Cuban diaspora that populated the area in droves following the 1959 revolution, is still mostly a blue-collar immigrant neighborhood. But proposed zoning changes for taller condos and more commercial development have activists worried those residents could be pushed out. Developers and city officials backing the changes argue they would revitalize an economically depressed neighborhood, but critics are pushing back.

"The war is going to begin," Yvonne Bayona, a longtime resident and activist, tells New Times. "These high-rises are going to come, and they're going to eat us if we don't act quickly."

I thought this line from the article was pretty funny (the implication that getting rid of parking requirements would attract young yuppies that would force out lower/working class current residents):

The first affront on their neighborhood, activists say, came last October, when the city moved to reduce an existing 1.5-car-per-unit parking requirement in an effort aimed at attracting more urban, carless residents.

[simms3_redux]

^^^^So in other words, it sounds like Miami has the same "issue" going on in terms of its starlet Latin neighborhood losing soul/character and some of its aging/lower class Latin residents for wealthier residents.

Also, again there are a few key differences between Miami and San Francisco.

1) Miami may have small land size in its limits, but is surrounded by a lot of space, a lot of communities directly adjacent or connected, even with the Everglades there. San Francisco is truly land-locked and is a solid minimal 50 sq mi before one has to cross water or drive past some ranges to get to other living space. That's a pretty key difference.

Granted, SF has better transit. For instance, one could live in Oakland and be in DT SF in less time than many people living in large parts of SF city limits.

Miami has decent transit, too, for a Sunbelt city, but it's not close to the same level.


2) Miami's main "gentrification" or in-demand real estate is and will always be right along the water, where rich foreigners and domestic people will always demand a condo or home. Miami's demand is not born out of its local economy, and it's not a force majeure for young professionals or corporations.

In contrast, people aren't moving to SF or the Bay Area for the "lifestyle", even though there definitely is a unique lifestyle associated with the area. The Bay Area has one of the world's largest and most important economies. San Francisco is the urban hub. Therefore, the demand is not limited to waterfront luxe condos, but the *whole* city - people just want to live near work and excitement.

So the "crappy" inland parts of Miami aren't seeing skyrocketing demand by wealthier folks looking for more/new space to live, build, eat, play etc as they run out of space on the waterfront, however, if this were San Francisco, you'd see skyrocketing demand in places as far inland as Sweetwater just for the sake of housing a highly educated, highly paid workforce hired by one of hundreds of corporations HQ'd in the area, attracting a glut of top-tier workers.


What this translates to is apparently *some* demand to redo the close-in Calle Ocho/Little Havana and gentrify that, but *insane* demand to house workers in one of the most vibrant and transit rich neighborhoods in *insanely in demand by young talented workforce* San Francisco.

The pressures between the two cities just couldn't be more difficult. The challenges to house the two very different groups of people coming to each city couldn't be more different.



My intent was never to "bash Miami", but as everyone aside from one local Miami poster seems to agree, the article is really missing the mark and there are some extreme fundamental differences between the two places. One cannot simply say, "Miami is doing a wonderful job at preserving its historic Latino neighborhoods and San Francisco is not." Simply put, each neighborhood remains a neighborhood in transition, as at least one of them has been for its entire existence.

[Private Dick]

Miami and San Francisco are such vastly different cities in nearly every way... that spending any additional time discussing a low-talent, uniformed blogger's poorly-researched post is simply a tremendous waste of time.

[peanut gallery]

Yeah, it looks like we can all agree he got it pretty wrong on both coasts.

[jpdivola]

Ok, I'll add to the pile on. This article was a clumsy attempt to make a valid point about the need for more housing via a breezy account of two superficially similar neighborhoods. Miami and SF really are two very different beasts. The underlying demands are vastly different. SF is a far wealthier MSA with a much more dynamic economy.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis on cost of living adjusted personal incomes by MSA. In 2011, raw per capita income was 61k in the SF MSA vs. 43.1k in the Miami MSA. But even when they adjusted for differences in cost of living, people in the SF MSA still earned 25% more than in the Miami MSA. https://bea.gov/scb/pdf/2013/08%20Au...e_parities.pdf

When comparing the cities themselves, SF is easily the far wealthier city. Median Household income in Miami is 30.4k vs. 75.6k in SF. When you compare housing costs to income, households spend 26.5% of their income on housing in SF vs. 39.2% in Miami. Even among just renters, renters in Miami spend 46.4% of their income on housing vs. 31.1% in SF.
http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/n...ty_facts.xhtml
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/12/1245000.html
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0667000.html

So housing to income costs are actually lower in SF than in Miami!!!

Of course this isn't to attack Miami. Yes, it lacks a SF or even Minneapolis style based knowledge economy. That drives downs its income and education levels. But, it is also a major point of entry for immigrantion. Nearly 70.5% of Miami’s adult pop (over 25) is foreign born vs. 41.5% in SF. Now immigrants tend to earn less money, so we would naturally expect that to pull down Miami’s averages. This is magnified by the fact that immigrants in Miami tend to be lower skilled than those in SF. The average immigrant man in Miami earns 57.9% of what a native born man in Miami earns. In SF, the average immigrant man earns 63.4% of a native-born person. The relative earnings gaps are even larger among women, 62.5% in Miami vs 71.2% in SF.

Plus there is the fact that Miami is less densely populated, with more vacant land available for redevelopment. SF is tightly packed with 3-story flats on small plots that do not lend themselves well to higher density redevelopment.

So yeah, it really is an apples and oranges comparison.

All that being said, the author did make a valid point that restrictions on development push up prices and SF could allow more development. I just wish he had cited some credible studies instead of writing a “pop” economics piece based on walking around a couple areas. This is as bad as the authors who compare rents in new buildings to older apartments and conclude that it is development that is pushing up prices.

[Leo the Dog]

Originally Posted by Private Dick

Miami and San Francisco are such vastly different cities in nearly every way... that spending any additional time discussing a low-talent, uniformed blogger's poorly-researched post is simply a tremendous waste of time.

Yeah he lost me when he said both are "warm weather cities".

[Obadno]

I've lived in Phoenix Az my entire life and every time, weather it be businesses, media, Politics that tries to group "Hispanics" or "Latinos" In to some sort of monolithic group makes me annoyed.

The reason "grouping" works for African Americans is because they predominantly live in poor inner city communities in the eastern half of the country. But even that is stupid when trying to apply to modern African immigrants compared to native black Americans.

Its all in an attempt to "woo" the next "minority voting block" I find it frustrating as if an Italian descendent Argentinian has anything in Common with a Cuban in Miami or a Mexican from Guadalajara or Native Peruvian.

I just find the entire exercise destined to fail

[Zapatan]

Originally Posted by brickell

And again, all of Miami is ethnic. Even Brickell. Brickell is whiter (more gringo) and a place you don't need spanish on a daily basis, but it is a place that you will hear a lot of it anyway. But further, people being displaced from West Brickell, Little Havana, Wynwood, what have you, have many other options for places to live comfortably. This doesn't seem to be true for SF's ethnic neighborhoods.

Most of all and as others have mentioned, Miami's gentrification pressure has been north of downtown in Overtown, Wynwood, Midtown and the bayfront neighborhoods along Biscayne Blvd. These neighborhoods (perhaps just as ethnic as Little Havana is) are being razed by the day for some pretty disgusting towers if you ask me.

That Little Havana isn't gentrifying as fast is just an accident of geography. It's got nothing to do with poverty or difference in economic circumstance.

What does "ethnic" mean? Someone who doesn't speak English as a native language? Quite possibly the majority of Latinos in Miami consider themselves "white".

Although it is usually Anglo-Americans who do the gentrifying in major cities, and I'm under the impression that there aren't many in Miami, but rather rich foreigners from Brazil or Argentina etc. who want to move directly into a rich neighborhood rather than force poor people out of a deteriorating/dangerous one...

I can't really see much hope for a place like Overtown in the near future.

[bobdreamz]

^ Zapatan? I give Overtown about a decade before it is completely obliterated as a black community by the wall of high rises marching towards it which is very sad because of it's history.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Obadno

I've lived in Phoenix Az my entire life and every time, weather it be businesses, media, Politics that tries to group "Hispanics" or "Latinos" In to some sort of monolithic group makes me annoyed.

The reason "grouping" works for African Americans is because they predominantly live in poor inner city communities in the eastern half of the country. But even that is stupid when trying to apply to modern African immigrants compared to native black Americans.

Its all in an attempt to "woo" the next "minority voting block" I find it frustrating as if an Italian descendent Argentinian has anything in Common with a Cuban in Miami or a Mexican from Guadalajara or Native Peruvian.

I just find the entire exercise destined to fail

1) A majority of African-Americans DO NOT live in poor inner city communities. A majority live in suburbs.
2) The poverty rate among blacks is the highest of any racial or ethnic group, but has declined slightly over time, from 31.3% in 1976 to 27.2% in 2014, according to census data. By comparison, the overall U.S. poverty rate has increased from 12.3% in 1976 to 14.9% in 2014.
3) High school dropout rates have declined faster among blacks ages 18 to 24 than the national average. Among blacks, the rate dropped from 24% in 1976 to 8% in 2013, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

It makes since to lump African-Americans in a distinct category, because it is a distinct ethnic group and culture that is unique to America. Latino/Hispanic is a much broader classification and doesn't account for the vast diversity within this racial/ethnic categorization.

When people make these kind of generalizations it really exposes how many people on these city forums come in very little contact with anybody that doesn't look or act like them.