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DeFede: Unrepaired Homes Plague Low-Income Housing

DOWNTOWN MIAMI (CBS4 News) ― The affordable housing crisis is a problem that will not be resolved anytime soon. The problems exposed by The Miami Herald and the Miami Dade County Grand Jury reveal a county government deeply flawed.

Don Horn, the Chief Assistant State Attorney, told me earlier this week that he expects criminal charges brought against those who profited from the housing scandal in the next two months. These are people who profited at the expense of the poor in our county. Meanwhile, a national search is underway for a new housing director -- that too may take several months.

But community activists are demanding immediate action. The poor in this community need help now -- they argue -- not several months from now. They couldn't be more right.

Earlier today I had a chance to sit down with Miami Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez. He shares the frustration of activists. One area that especially angers Alvarez is the fact that the county currently has almost 1,000 apartments -- specifically designated for low-income families -- sitting empty because they are in disrepair.

"If you have a large inventory, why wouldn't you take advantage of that?" Alvarez said.

Alvarez was told many of the rental apartments had been sitting idle for months, waiting for repair work. Alvarez wondered why that was.

"Now my questions are, what program do we have in the housing agency where somebody moves out, a group of people come in, they paint, they fix the plumbing, they fix the carpeting, so that we have a turnaround of maybe 30 days, 60 days at the most," he said. "So we don't have 980 units vacant and in need of repair, and the answer quite frankly was that there really isn't much of a program.

"And that's unacceptable and that has be addressed."

Now I realize that in a county as large as Miami-Dade, a thousand apartments will not solve the housing crisis. But for those 1,000 families -- needlessly waiting in limbo -- the county's inability to get these apartment's ready in a timely fashion is the difference between having a sense of hope and feeling as if no one cares what happens to you.

"I don't care how badly a unit is damaged," said Alvarez. "It's much easier to fix an existing unit than to build or construct a building."

The problem Alvarez uncovered is part of the larger problem of incompetent management at the Miami-Dade Housing Agency.

But there is no excuse for these units sitting empty. The county needs to move quickly to get these apartments into shape and get them rented.

That will be a good first step in what will be a long march to reform.

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