|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Cutler Bay Town Council on Wednesday, Nov. 29, hosted a special town hall meeting about the proposed purchase of the La Quinta hotel on Caribbean Boulevard by a Miami-Dade County agency, The Homeless Trust.
The purpose of the meeting was to allow both sides an opportunity to state their views and have a question-and-answer session that was not only attended by a live audience of Cutler Bay residents and invited guests in the Council Chamber but also viewed live online via Facebook and Zoom. The meeting lasted from 6 to 8 p.m.
Mayor Tim Meerbott opened the session with an initial statement.
“As you are aware, the Homeless Trust has proposed an initiative to purchase the La Quinta hotel over here on Caribbean Blvd. and use it for their needs for providing a shelter for homeless and it is in the county budget and this is not something that the Town of Cutler Bay gets to vote on,” Mayor Meerbott said. “This is something that is going to be voted on by the Board of County Commissioners.
“When this was first brought to my attention in early July, where they reached out to Ralph [Rafael G. Casals, town manager] and said ‘hey, we’re thinking about this.’ From our perspective we thought great, you can think about it but it doesn’t meet the minimum requirements and so they won’t be able to go forward, and didn’t give it much more thought. They reached out again a couple times after that,” the mayor continued.
“At one point I do know that we did send them some requirements or instructions on how to obtain a variance that they wanted to do that going forward, again with no input from the council. None of the council actually discussed anything with the Homeless Trust. From their perspective, I think they believe they reached out to our staff and again that’s where we really come to brass tacks whether there was enough communication between what the county would like to do, what the Homeless Trust would like to do, and what the Town of Cutler Bay would like to do.”
Mayor Meerbott was conciliatory and respectful saying he didn’t want to spend a lot of time talking about whether there was enough communication and wanted to move on. He stated that “the Homeless Trust are not the enemy of the people” and that they provide a very needed service.
“Homelessness is a problem throughout the country and in some areas much worse than we have it here in Dade County, but you know we’re all facing a housing crisis, we all know that housing prices are skyrocketing, rent prices are skyrocketing, insurance prices are skyrocketing and it’s making it very difficult for people to find places to live here in Cutler Bay,” Mayor Meerbott said.
“We’re constantly battling people putting campers in their backyards and adding additional efficiencies, and those trying to do things to find places for people to live. We want to try to balance the needs of as many people as possible but also make sure that we preserve our community as what it is, a family-friendly community.”
The mayor thanked Miami-Dade County Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins for “standing up for them” and asking the county commissioners to give the town 60 days to find an additional site and for the opportunity to arrange a meeting to discuss the matter. The mayor was unhappy with the town not having a vote and with the project conflicting with the town’s development plans.
Ronald L. Book, chair of the Board of Trustees for the Homeless Trust, spoke.
“I want to apologize to the citizens for having my back to them but I’m talking to you as much as I’m talking to the council and for any slights that members of the community may think we made, I apologize,” Book said.
He described the history of the Homeless Trust and said, “What we are is a continuum of care. We are a funder to other entities. We buy beds; we buy units; we buy services throughout the community — the Salvation Army, the Rescue Mission, Lotus house, Camillus House, New Hope, are partners in our fight to end homelessness.
“We are looked at as the model for America. Let me be clear to each of you, as I said to the mayor and a couple of your colleagues that joined us with the manager at the chairman’s policy council meeting at Miami-Dade 10 days ago, this is never going to be a shelter. It is not a shelter. Period.”
Book continued, “We will covenant that it will not be a shelter, and we are not going to ever have a needle exchange. We are good citizens in the community. There just needs to be in an apartment building and we need to break the narrative of it being a shelter, because it’s not. They have funds to pay rent and I repeat, everybody that would live here will have a lease and will pay rent. If they break the rules they will be evicted.”
He mentioned that there were a number of people at the meeting from an earlier project, Mia Casa, in North Miami, adapted from an adult living facility.
Mayor Meerbott stated his view.
“I understand what the Homeless Trust is trying to accomplish,” the mayor said. “And I do want to commend some of the work that they’ve done with Mia Casa and other areas, but I also think it’s important that when you’re doing a site selection you can certainly consider the other alternatives.”
Mayor Meerbott went through a history of Cutler Bay and that area. He spoke of the desire to make Cutler Bay more than it was for many years, and of the community visioning meetings.
“The vision for this area was to create a mixed-use, walkable, livable community, but more importantly it’s also to bring jobs down here as well medical facilities, attorneys, anything that we could get the people out of the traffic going north and spending an hour and a half every day. The Southland Mall — the Cutler Ridge Mall at the time — was identified as a great area and this was basically rezoned,” he said.
“We worked hard for 15 years trying to find somebody that would come and take what was an underperforming mall and do something that was going to help Cutler Bay and all the South Dade area to bring the housing that we need. The only thing that’s going to affect the rent prices is supply. There are studies in Iowa that showed for every thousand units that they build the average rent goes down six percent.”
He showed a slide of an architectural rendering of a large apartment complex.
“It’s going to bring 5,000 units so we should see reductions in rents as all these units are built. When we’re talking about the La Quinta area you can’t look at what it is now, you really have to look at what it could be. La Quinta right now is a three- or four-story building. You can have an eight-story building there and that does much more to alleviate the supply of housing. We can help 104 or 240 or we can try to help as many as possible — we can try to help six or seven thousand and that’s what the vision of anything that goes in this area needs to be compatible with.”
Book was then asked to return to the microphone to answer questions from the mayor and the council members about security and other matters.
Victoria L. Mallette, executive director of the Homeless Trust, joined Book answering questions about the people who would be living there.
“Everybody goes through an assessment, and one of the prioritization factors for referral is age and vulnerability,” Mallette said. “We do have guidelines and we have orders of priority.
They’re on our website.”
She said that the homeless would be the elderly, the disabled and the working poor, people with jobs that didn’t pay enough to make current high rent or mortgage payments.
Book assured them that there would be no sexual predators and no pedophiles living there.
He said that anyone with a serious recent crime would be assessed far differently from someone with a minor crime 20 years ago.
There were questions from residents attending the meeting. Some were concerned with crime.
Some were concerned about property values. Some just wanted a homeless facility to be anyplace else but in Cutler Bay. One woman asked if any of the homeless would be immigrants. One man was concerned about traffic problems (the response was, “They don’t have cars. They use public transportation.”)
At the end of the meeting, both sides had spoken but no agreement had been worked out other than to continue seeking a solution.
ABOUT US:
For more Miami community news, look no further than Miami Community Newspapers. This Miami online group of newspapers covers a variety of topics about the local community and beyond. Miami’s Community Newspapers offers daily news, online resources, podcasts and other multimedia content to keep readers informed. With topics ranging from local news to community events, Miami’s Community Newspapers is the ideal source for staying up to date with the latest news and happenings in the area.
This family-owned media company publishes more than a dozen neighborhood publications, magazines, special sections on their websites, newsletters, as well as distributing them in print throughout Miami Dade County from Aventura, Sunny Isles Beach, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Brickell, Coconut Grove, Pinecrest, South Miami, Kendall, Palmetto Bay, Cutler Bay and Homestead. Each online publication and print editions provide comprehensive coverage of local news, events, business updates, lifestyle features, and local initiatives within its respective community.
Additionally, the newspaper has exclusive Miami community podcasts, providing listeners with an in-depth look into Miami’s culture. Whether you’re looking for local Miami news, or podcasts, Miami’s Community Newspapers has you covered. For more information, be sure to check out: https://communitynewspapers.com.
If you have any questions, feel free to email Michael@communitynewspapers.com or Grant@communitynewspapers.com.
