The houses are sprouting like a carefully planted flower garden, neat rows of blue and green and orange where this summer there was only dirt. Two dozen new homes are under construction on the site of the old Scott-Carver public housing projects, with five others already finished and 28 more planned.

Built by Habitat for Humanity, each has a white sign engraved with a new owner's name: ''The Jones House,'' ''The Williams House,'' ``The Brown House.''

Many lived on this land when it held 850 public-housing units, exiled years ago when the government promised to build new houses and sell them at affordable prices.

Like so many of Miami-Dade County's other affordable-housing plans, it was hobbled by mismanagement, waste and incessant delays. As recently as last July, when The Miami Herald began to expose the problems in its ''House of Lies'' series, only three homes had been built on the property, which was a wasteland of boarded-up, barracks-style buildings.

As the year ends, however, steady progress on numerous housing programs is symbolized by the slow rebirth of this Liberty City neighborhood.

''I've been waiting for this for a long time,'' said LaWanda Owens, a fast-food cook who moved into her three-bedroom house with her three daughters. ``This is a blessing to stop renting and have a stable place to live.''

Outrage over the housing scandals prompted large protests, including a rainy overnight demonstration outside county hall in September. Activists demanded an immediate infusion of $200 million, which commissioners told County Manager George Burgess to explore.

In the last four months, the county has closed more than $5 million in construction loans with developers building five new affordable-housing projects -- projects planned to produce 356 units. Some other long-delayed developments have been canceled, with $5.7 million reclaimed since September, according to a sweeping update memo written earlier this month by the county manager.

Nearly 150 public-housing units that were in unlivable disrepair have been cleaned up and occupied, with 350 more being repaired by county staff members and nearly 500 more being bundled into contracts for private companies to repair.

But the immediate progress is hardly enough to dent the list of 41,000 families waiting for affordable housing, and many leaders believe that deep procedural changes will be necessary to catch up.

Indeed, affordable housing is being squeezed at a time Miami-Dade is among the nation's least affordable places to live.

''From what I'm seeing with the county, there's just too much red tape, too much time just to get permits to develop these homes,'' said Commissioner Audrey Edmonson, whose district includes some of the county's most impoverished neighborhoods. ``A lot of the slow-down that is occurring is due to the county itself.''

Burgess hired a new leader for the Housing Authority, which was responsible for overseeing many of the troubled programs. The new director, Kris Warren, came from the Tampa Housing Authority and promptly hired away that agency's chief financial officer.

''There are fresh faces on the scene,'' said Cynthia Curry, a senior Burgess aide tapped to oversee the housing scandal. ``This is the massive reorganization of the Miami-Dade Housing Agency.''

Warren insisted she would resist political pressures in her new position; former Director Rene Rodriguez is being investigated for his ties to developers, some of whom paid him large consulting fees shortly after he left county government.