Broken American dream: North Miami family races to find new home before imminent ouster
Marie Honor beamed with pride showing a visitor the pigeon peas growing from a bush in the front yard of her home in North Miami’s Sunkist Grove neighborhood.
Two tall palm trees stood five feet away from the bush, making the light yellow house look like a palace. As Honor explained how the mango tree in her backyard reminds her of her childhood in Haiti, a neighbor called her name. The neighbor then brought her a bag of fruit.
For Honor, 59, tending to her dream home in America now has become a nightmare, a story of desperation.
She and her family are being forced to leave the three-bedroom, single-family house she’s rented for the past 11 years, with financial help from the federal government through a Section 8 home voucher. Honor and her sons Mardochee Pierre, 23, and Kervin Lundy, 19, were recently asked by the property owner to vacate the home in 60 days, which means by June 23.
Unbeknownst to her, the landlord apparently took advantage of the lucrative housing market in Miami-Dade County for sellers and put the house on the market. The owner confirmed to the Miami Herald the house is under contract to be sold, although there’s no closing date set.
Honor first found out the house she’s treated as her own at 1250 NW 127th St. went up for sale, when she got an unexpected knock on her front door from visitors who came to view the home. She was in shock, but let the visitors walk around her home.
The lack of communication from her landlord about the imminent sale, and the stress of finding a new place to live has made her high blood pressure and diabetes worse, Honor said.
“(I felt) inferior, sad and nervous,” she said in a recent interview at her house. “Maybe I was being discriminated (against) because I don’t have any money? Why does he (the landlord) treat me like that? I was so sad that I could not sleep.”
Brandy Pollack, her landlord and the homeowner since 2018 through BJP Investments Inc. of Pembroke Pines, called Honor a “good tenant.” He wished she and her family could continue renting his house, but he said he needed to sell it for “personal financial circumstances” that he declined to disclose.
Therefore, Honor and her sons seem destined to join the growing list of Miami-Dade County residents pushed out of their homes, either because they no longer can afford increasing rents, or property owners see a prime opportunity to sell and potentially reap a huge windfall. Over a year of severely limited supply of existing homes and apartments on the market in Miami-Dade combined with the consistently frantic demand to buy or rent in the county has disproportionately hurt the middle-class and those less fortunate. They typically can’t afford to buy or rent homes right now.
Last year, Miami-Dade data shows 47,705 area residents entered the eviction process, a big jump from the 39,030 residents in 2020. For myriad reasons, many of those people both years didn’t ultimately end up being formally evicted from their homes by law enforcement officials. The figures so far this year reveal there’s an eviction crunch alongside the county’s home affordability crisis. From January through May 19, already another 24,760 residents have gone into the eviction pipeline. Last month, county officials took action to provide temporary rental assistance to tenants struggling the most to pay monthly rent and face eviction.
College, career dreams on hold
Honor’s oldest son, Mardochee, is a computer science student at Miami Dade College and works at night as a cashier at a local 7-11 store. The former varsity baseball player is visibly hobbled by a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee he sustained in 2016. Yet he still speaks with the enthusiasm of an athlete that just won the World Series. He pointed to each childhood photo of him his mother has hung on one wall at home and told the memorable story behind each one.
“I want to make things,” he said, talking about his goals and technology pursuits. “Everyone wants to be the next Elon Musk and I feel like with the right people and right idea, you can make anything.”
Honor’s younger son, Kervin, is a senior at William H. Turner Technical Arts High School. He was able to go and enjoy his recent senior prom thanks to his sister Nissie Pierre, 26, who helped cover his prom expenses. Kervin’s prom provided a respite from thinking about his family’s housing dilemma. With his high school graduation on June 7 fast approaching, he has had to rethink his plans after he receives his diploma.
“Before I found out about (our) situation, I thought I was set,” he said. “I thought I was going to Miami Dade College for two years, then transferring (to a four-year university). But with the situation going on, it’s like I need to come up with something. Where am I going to stay at? It’s very much stressful and there’s a lot of pressure in my hands, because also I have to do good in school, too. It’s so much going on.”
Challenges to success in America
In 1990 in search of better opportunities, Honor moved with her former husband and daughters, Jenny Pierre, now 32, Nissie Pierre and oldest son, Mardochee, to Miami from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Seven months after arriving in the United States, Honor’s oldest daughter Jenny had a seizure at 18 months old that rendered her comatose for 22 days. A certified nursing assistant who primarily gets assignments through temporary work agencies, Honor took care of her daughter at home for decades before a 2019 pneumonia infection. After that, Jenny became a patient at a local care facility where she remains.
Since the day her daughter got sick and had to go to the care home, Honor has hoped she could return to live with family again. Now, the family’s precarious housing situation has put that reunion in jeopardy — at least temporarily.
Meanwhile, the search for another home to rent has been difficult for the Honor family. Among the challenges, Section 8 housing vouchers have to be renewed annually based on a recipient’s income and they are not transferable from one home to another. Families typically move at the end of a one-year period, coinciding with them receiving new vouchers.
Because the Honor family is being forced to move before the end of the current voucher term, the family doesn’t have immediate access to a new voucher. Also, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development bases the amount of the family’s voucher on a property’s rental cost. Honor doesn’t know where she’s going to move her family, so she has no idea what the monthly rent would be at her next home.
Under the family’s current Section 8 voucher, Honor pays $1,001 toward monthly rent of $2,150, and the government covers the remaining $1,149. Her monthly jumped on Jan. 1 from $1,794 to its current rate. Honor already struggles paying rent and so far she’s only found prospective homes commanding higher rents.
“Without the voucher, we cannot do anything,” her son Mardochee said. “Even at the cheapest, some house rents are going for $2,500. It’s like they want to push us out of where we’re at now in an already inflated market. It feels like a predatory practice.”
Honor and her family initially planned on staying in North Miami because of familiarity and the sense of community Sunkist Grove has provided them over the years. With their imminent forced relocation, they are now exploring all possible options.
Tight neighbors in Sunkist Grove
The Honor’s one-story house does not look different from the other quaint homes on its street in Sunkist Grove. The sleepy neighborhood is home to many retirees. And it’s one in which neighbors regularly talk to each other and lend a helping hand. The Honor family has frequently talked with neighbors about life, community events and more. The family’s housing predicament has affected the neighbors, too.
Erika Diaz has been a neighbor for years and lived next door her entire life to the house where Honor and her sons reside. Diaz, 38, was effusive in her praise of Honor and her sons, noting they have always been great neighbors.
“I can see what (their family) is trying to become and it sucks that they’re going to be displaced,” she said. “Especially with a sick sister, they’re dealing with that, everything else and pretty much homelessness.”
Pollack, Honor’s landlord, has a different view of the situation. He told a Miami Herald reporter bluntly “there is no eviction.” He said the financial circumstances he’s dealing with forced him to sell the house he’s leased to Honor. He declined to explain those circumstances to a reporter. Pollack said the house, which county property records show he acquired in October 2018 for $150,000 with a partner entity, is now under contract to be sold. There’s no closing date yet, he said, declining to give the sale price.
“She was sent a notice to vacate,” the landlord said of Honor. “There’s no eviction. She’s been a good tenant and the property is being sold. ... I spoke with her son who speaks perfect English and explained to Miss Marie that there was an issue in my business.”
Following government regulations on tenants with Section 8 vouchers, Pollack gave the Honor family 60 days to vacate the property.
Pollack doesn’t anticipate Honor finding another home to rent within the 60-day notice period and said he would give the family “more time.” However, he declined to tell a Herald reporter whether that additional time would be weeks or months. Honor told the reporter she’s not sure what Pollack means by a time extension.
Another of Honor’s Sunkist Grove neighbors is retired human services worker Theodore Pressey. He was livid when he found out Honor and her sons were being forced to move.
Ultimately, he thinks the family’s dire situation represents a public failure.
“It speaks to our government system,” Pressey said. “They saw this problem long ago and didn’t do anything to try and fix it. You need to have somebody controlling the rent and how the prices go up. People have been loyal to these landlords for years and now their landlord is telling them, ‘We don’t give a damn about you.’”
‘State of emergency’
Annie Lord, executive director of Miami Homes For All, said the nonprofit working to find people permanent housing has never been busier. Increasingly, there’s individuals dealing with desperate circumstances like the Honor family is facing. She hears displacement ordeals daily, often multiple times a day.
“People are sleeping in their car or moving in with family,” Lord said. “I think people’s quality of life is taking a major hit and they’re becoming homeless. It’s affecting young people, elderly people, families. ... I’ve never seen anything like this. It was always a problem, but now it’s a state of emergency.”
Editor’s note: Additional reporting was added to this story to clarify the specific numbers of Miami-Dade County residents in 2020, 2021 and so far this year that started the formal eviction process, but many of them never actually were evicted from their homes by law enforcement officials.
This story was originally published June 5, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
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