Miami, land of dreams, now denies new generation a middle-class American Dream | Opinion

You have a college degree, a career you enjoy, making somewhere around $60,000 to $80,000 a year. You’ve made sound financial decisions outside of the occasional credit-card splurge.

Welcome to America’s middle class. You thought that was enough to afford a simple, yet comfortable, life, owning a home and maybe going on vacation once a year. Not in South Florida — not anymore.

Your budget gets tighter and tighter. The annual family vacation is the first to go, then dining out, then the cable-TV subscription. You can live without such luxuries. But then homeownership becomes beyond your reach. You can’t even pay rent in Miami-Dade’s once-affordable suburbs, like Hialeah or Westchester, where your immigrant parents or grandparents once built their foundation. You feel like you’ve failed to live the dream they worked so hard to provide you.

There’s heartbreak behind South Florida’s housing-affordability crisis. It’s the loss of a community as people are forced to leave the area. Sometimes they move just miles north to Broward County, sometimes as far as Ocala or Jacksonville. Sometimes they stay, hoping to ride out the crisis, but wondering if it’s in vain. This loss is shared among Miamians not making six figures (and sometimes even among those who are), those who can see luxury high-rises multiplying in Miami’s skyline, but who can’t even afford the average single-family home in Kendall.

Miamians always loved luxury, the millionaires and billionaires, the high-living celebrities who give the city its glitz. We didn’t mind watching them cruise by on their yachts, speed past in their Lamborghinis. But there once was a place for the rest of us — small-business owners, government workers, university professors, teachers and other professionals. They once felt insulated from the struggles that minimum-wage workers and low-income neighbors faced, people who needed programs like public housing or Section 8 vouchers.

The Herald this week interviewed career professionals living in Miami-Dade County who are financially squeezed, even though they earn substantially more than the county’s median household income of $59,044, the latest U.S. Census Bureau figure. They’ve dealt with astronomical rent increases, been outbid by other home buyers, on the brink of homelessness and had to leave their childhood neighborhood.

These are the people who traditionally weren’t top of mind for housing advocates and elected officials. Today our local government recognizes that’s no longer the case. The Miami-Dade County Commission recently approved a comprehensive housing program that offers subsidies benefiting families of four living on up to $136,500. Some housing advocates have criticized the program for helping tenants who can still get by in Miami. Nevertheless, it’s an indication of how widespread the crisis is.

To afford the average rent of $3,140 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in the Miami metropolitan area, you must make at least $125,000 a year, according to Redfin, a digital site of real-estate listings. That’s based on the recommendation by housing experts that renters spend no more than 30% of their pre-tax monthly household income on rent. To buy a home, the recommendation is that you spend three-and-a-half times your annual income. Homeowners must make $164,000 a year to buy a single-family house at the $575,000 midpoint price, the Herald reported. Despite the increase in interest rates, home values were still rising in October, the Herald reported.

Affording these prices isn’t just a matter of asking your boss for a raise or finding a better job. It’s a fundamental shift in how home ownership has evolved in America. Once the standard of middle-class living, it now feels out of reach for a substantial portion of South Floridians.

The people featured in the Herald’s story answered queries asking readers how they’re making ends meet and what they are most concerned about in Miami-Dade County. Many said they no longer have expectations to become homeowners. A woman described delaying having a second child. Others said they no longer want to live in South Florida and are giving up on Miami.

When asked what opinion column they would write about an important local issue, a reader responded:

“’The Disappearing Native Species And The Financial Ruin Of Their Ecosystem At The Hands Of The Invasive Species,’ about the housing-affordability crisis in South Florida.”

Miami’s “native species” isn’t disappearing. It’s still here, just struggling and wondering if there are greener pastures elsewhere.

This story was originally published December 13, 2022 at 4:00 AM.