To really be effective, the Live Local Act needs to create long-term housing | Opinion
Finding home
Anthony de Yurre’s Sept. 22 Miami Herald online op-ed, “Florida’s long-term economic growth depends on embracing Live Local Act” is understandably one-sided. He’s a land use lawyer for developers of large and dense high-rise buildings. With land and building costs at all-time records, higher and denser is the most economical way to quickly address the housing shortage.
However, what about the long-term?
Sustainable, livable communities need a variety of housing units and commercial businesses where people want to live long-term. Jane Jacob’s landmark treatise, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” demonstrated that point six decades ago. De Yurre briefly concedes the point, stating that Live Local allows a mix of housing types.
Unfortunately to date, Live Local projects have all been big, dense and rental. If the GI Bill of 1944 had followed that course, we wouldn’t have had the success of the American middle class, built on homeownership and the equity it generated for mostly white veterans of WW II.
For the Live Local Act to produce long-term benefit, it must provide not just shelter but places of all types, with some percentage of homeownership, for people to call these new places “home.”
Anthony Parrish, Jr.,
Coconut Grove
Arts funding cuts
The wonderful Sept. 22 Herald article, “Miami arts groups ready to put on a show amid funding cuts,” describes how arts organizations are having to creatively adapt to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ idiotic, heartless and economically ignorant veto of all arts funding. He is clearly unaware that numerous studies have consistently shown that arts and culture programs return up to $9 for every dollar spent.
These programs are an investment in the future of our children, as most of these organizations have special programs just for kids. DeSantis fails to understand that art and culture is what defines us as humans and makes all of our lives far richer.
Doug Mayer,
Coral Gables
Condo malpractice
Imagine a house collapsed, killing several people and the Florida Legislature responded by requiring homeowners to hire engineers to immediately perform a study on their homes (for older homes, engineers must evaluate all plumbing, electrical, roofing and structural components). Next, require all homeowners to create reserves to pay for deficiencies. Now, substitute condominium owners for homeowners.
When the Surfside condo collapsed, the Florida Legislature panicked and created costly unfunded mandates for condominium owners, most of which have nothing to do with building collapse. This governmental overreach was done without any serious studies or expert opinions on costs to owners, without obtaining basic information how most states reasonably regulate high rise structures, by adding on costly evaluations unrelated to building collapse and by funding 60 government regulatory positions to, in effect, create another bureaucratic nightmare.
As a result, the real estate market for condos of three stories or higher is dangerously close to collapse itself.
Florida House Rep. Vicki Lopez is the chief apologist for this overly broad legislative malpractice and should resign in disgrace. Instead, she has mischaracterized the gross overreach.
Why not have reasonable legislation to protect against building collapse? Is this “The Free State Of Florida” for condominium owners?
Graham Clarke,
Panama City
Kinder candidate
Ex-President Donald Trump lost me altogether in 2015 when he mocked Serge Kovaleski, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times who has a disability. Trump proved himself a consummate bully that day. From that moment, I wondered how anyone could vote for this man.
Trump’s inane performance in the Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris just left me wondering. To Harris, leadership is about lifting people up and not beating them down.
In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Harris met with disability rights leaders at the White House in July. In a social media post, she remarked that she was honored to celebrate Disability Pride Month and thanked them for “the history-making work you do each day to fight for a more inclusive and accessible America.”
Connie Goodman-Milone,
Miami
Change needed
Florida has the highest home insurance rates in the nation. This has painful consequences for all Floridians.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott frequently talks about helping Floridians, yet what has he done to alleviate the skyrocketing costs of home insurance in the 13-plus years he has been in government?
The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a bill that would lower the cost of property insurance by 25% and is targeted at states like Florida that are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, such as hurricanes. If Scott wanted to help Floridians, he would have brought this bill to the Senate floor, but he chose not to do so.
On the other hand, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, his campaign opponent, has made affordability her top priority if she’s elected and has vowed to introduce the property insurance bill to the Senate.
Scott has been in the Senate long enough yet he’s done very little to help Floridians. In November, I call upon fellow Floridians who want solutions to the insurance crisis to vote for Mucarsel-Powell for the U.S. Senate.
Guillermo Levy,
Miami
Preventable deaths
Re: the Sept. 22 front page story, “Deonte’s death: How did Florida, two healthcare agency nurses allow 7-year-old to starve?” This is a glimpse of the Republican Party’s professed preference for “small government,” where most, if not all, governmental service agencies are dismantled and replaced with contracted services by private (for profit) companies. To be clear, this is nothing other than a cunning plan to transfer the wealth of the nation into the hands of a select few.
What is the priority of every privately run business?
Profit over people.
My heart aches after reading this horrible story of the deaths of Deonte Atwell, Tamiyah Audain, Samayah Emmanuel and the unnumbered, unmentioned others. Shame on the State of Florida for its complicit role in these deaths.
Rosa Osborne,
Pembroke Pines
Dems, look inward
Re: Andres Oppenhiemer’s Sept. 22 op-ed, “Assault weapons nearly killed Trump: Why aren’t we talking about banning them?” No, an assault weapon did no such thing. Rather a nutcase, who likely bought in to the relentless, years-long drum beat from the left, claiming that Trump is a fascist, like Hitler, a threat to Democracy and on and on.
As they always do, rather than look inward and possibly change their misguided rhetoric, born from hatred that can’t be explained, they blame it on an inanimate object. The media is equally at fault, for publishing op-eds and articles they must know are inflammatory.
How about if the left loses the Trump Derangement Syndrome and just uses its head, instead?
Dave Schaublin,
Key Largo
Focus on weapons
Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer is correct that social media does not focus on banning assault weapons but mostly about the U.S. Secret Service’s security failures.
How can anyone justify the need to own an assault rifle? It’s definitely not for hunting.
Why else own an assault weapon? Just because one can? Just because one is fearful these weapons of war will not be available for sale to civilians?
Americans who own these mass murder weapons claim it is their Second Amendment right to do so. No, it isn’t.
Why aren’t these assault rifle-owning extremists not fearful about what their weapons can do to the bodies of an young boy or girl?
These staunch supporters of Amendment Two have a warped interpretation of their rights to gun ownership.
As a middle school teacher, I am mentally exhausted of conducting shooter drills in my classroom and beyond exhausted seeing the fear in my students’ eyes as they huddle under their desks for “protection.” Teachers and students have rights, too: the right to teach and learn, the right to live.
Mayade Ersoff,
Palmetto Bay