Hoping to pick up a tiny dead shark in a jar for someone special this Christmas? Or perhaps a baby alligator skull? You better not tarry! City commissioners in Miami Beach last week passed a resolution asking local merchants to stop selling these truly bizarre souvenirs ASAP. This was necessary…
Miami’s Wynwood used to be a low-income neighborhood full of warehouses and fashion-supply companies. Then it morphed into a neighborhood full of art galleries. Now developers are pricing out cool places such as the Wynwood Yard. The one arthouse movie theater is on its way out while condo towers and a micro-city called the Americas-Asia Trade Center are on the way in.
The City of Miami last week tentatively approved rules that would force real-estate developers in a sliver of downtown to carve out portions of any new buildings for affordable or workforce-specific apartments and condos. That’s a big deal. Housing-rights activists have been fighting for stricter affordable-housing laws in Miami for…
Patricia Vieira had always dreamed of owning a boutique puppy shop. So after finding a storefront on Jefferson Avenue in Miami Beach this past January, she signed a 13-month lease with a $3,500 monthly rent, submitted her business license application, and finally got the go-ahead from the city in March. Specializing in teacup and toy breeds, she called her store Les Petits Puppies Boutique.
Miami’s King of Diamonds is, quite possibly, the most famous strip club in America. It’s a blue-neon-lit beacon on the side of I-95 where TV star Blac Chyna danced. KOD, as it’s informally known, has been referenced in countless rap songs. It regularly showed up in hip-hop videos. But as of this month, the club is basically no more…
At least nine former and current residents and employees have come forward with accusations of racial discrimination inside the Mirador 1000, an upscale condo building with its own hair salon and convenience mart where two-bedroom units are listed for up to $800,000.
Good news! Wages are finally rising in Miami-Dade County, a major metro area where the median income is a paltry $46,000, which is much lower than that of other cities of comparable size, such as Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle. Whoops, we forgot to mention one thing, though: Miami-area housing prices are rising way faster than those wages.
Miami-Dade’s jail system has been a mess for years. The downtown Pretrial Detention Center is now almost 60 years old. In recent years, the Department of Justice has blasted the county for operating leaky, roach-infested jails with overflowing urinals. And just last week, a correctional supervisor sued Miami-Dade for employment violations because the mold inside the detention center is so bad she can’t breathe.
When Tricia Fowley’s great-uncle moved to Surfside almost 70 years ago, he built three homes for his family on the corner of Harding Avenue and 93rd Street. Two of them were eventually knocked down to build a parking lot; Fowley grew up in and eventually inherited the third house — a two-bedroom, two-bath with a brick façade only one block from the beach.
Wynwood is Miami’s least remarkable neighborhood. South Beach is one of the world’s most iconic art deco cityscapes. Little Havana is a melting pot of Cuban and American traditions that exists nowhere else on Earth. Wynwood has street art, endless EDM, and $17 cocktails. You could pluck any Wynwood bar, pop it into Brooklyn or Seattle or Portland or Los Angeles or Austin, and nobody would notice a thing.
Nusret Gökçe, better known as Salt Bae, has built a global restaurant empire by turning himself into a sodium-tossing, skimpy-T-shirt-wearing Instagram meme. But the Miami outpost of his Nusr-Et steakhouse chain has been troubled from the start, bedeviled by lukewarm reviews and the Turkish chef’s decision to engage in some Fidel Castro cosplay.
There are perfectly legitimate worries that Airbnb gentrifies neighborhoods and makes cities even less affordable than they already are. But so far, cities have had a hard time figuring out exactly how to handle the service, which lets homeowners rent their properties for days at a time. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is locked in a fierce fight with the company over his city’s plan to crack down on Airbnb.
On a Saturday morning in 2013, Shalonda Rivers woke up early, ate a breakfast of microwaved oatmeal, and put a mop to her linoleum floor. It was the first step in her weekend cleaning routine, an ongoing battle against grime, pests, and mold that began when she moved into the…
By nearly every metric, Miami’s housing and rental markets are Kafkaesque nightmares. Few people can afford their homes here because they are expensive, while median incomes are embarrassingly low. It’s a dangerous predicament — one natural disaster could throw tons of cash-strapped homeowners spiraling into bankruptcy.
Earlier this year, real-estate analyst Peter Zalewski warned that South Florida developers had so overbuilt luxury condos for the global 1 percent that it would take an estimated four years to sell them all. At the rate condos were selling in downtown Miami, he found, the 505 available units would have taken nearly 6.5 years…
Miami Beach has established itself as one of the most anti-Airbnb cities in the country, banning short-term rentals across much of the island and issuing $20,000 fines for illegal listings. But so far, those fines have been aimed at property owners, not platforms like Airbnb. Last week, city commissioners moved to…
Miami’s cost of living remains relatively similar to that of other major, rent-crunched cities, such as Seattle and Boston. But — as New Times repeats so often it has turned into our meditation mantra — the county’s median household income level, which hovers around $43,000, is significantly lower than that of any other city of similar size and relative level of economic importance.
Miami Beach’s affordable-housing crisis is nothing new, and its elected officials know that. Seven years ago, the city adopted an ambitious plan to create at least 16,000 new affordable units by 2020. But last summer, commissioners admitted there was no way the city could hit that goal and voted to extend the deadline and reduce the goal to only 6,800 affordable units.
As the medical marijuana market continues to bloom around the Sunshine State, Curaleaf, one of South Florida’s main cannabis providers, is about to open the state’s first drive-thru pot dispensary.
At the end of Charles Avenue in the West Grove sits a freshly painted two-story house with white wooden siding and lemon-yellow trim. On a chain-link fence out front, a graffiti-covered cloth banner proclaims, “Historic ‘Stirrup House’ Bed and Breakfast: Coming soon.”
Living in a home with more than one room shouldn’t really be considered a luxury in 21st-century America. The richest nation on the planet certainly has the resources to make sure single working parents or janitors on 12-hour shifts aren’t forced to live in hovels. Yet here we are: The nonprofit National Low-Income Housing Coalition released a report yesterday titled “Out of Reach,”…
The mansion’s owners, with an eye on Little Haiti’s impending development, are looking to sell the haunted property.
