The Herald has one of their typical anti-development, one-sided articles about the troubles facing poor Wynwood residents who are faced with rising rents as a result of gentrification. Property values have skyrocketed in the past four years as art galleries have streamed in to fill the numerous raw industrial spaces found in this cool neighb. Midtown Miami's development hasn't helped either.
Read on for more savage, uncaring, free-market ranting.
Update: See how they do it in Brooklyn, where condo buyers have banded together to exert pressure on real estate developers.
The essential question at the heart of it all is this: is it part of the American way of life to be entitled to live in an area despite the market forces that are exerted upon you to leave? As a non-stakeholder (renter), is it your right to stay?
By 2007, Portillo called Wynwood, and Miami in general, a ''low-income resident expulsion zone'' in a letter to the editor of El Nuevo Herald. She cited Maria de León, a 30-year resident, who was booted by a developer who sold the building in which she lived.
Expulsion is such an unfair choice of words!
As a dickless yuppy, I am on the side of the developers: Wynwood is an intrinsically valuable neighborhood, and in the long term the value will continue to rise despite residents' opposition. It's near the commercial hub of Miami, the beauty of Biscayne Bay, and it has historical significance and a lot of interesting older properties. The hopeless Allapattah is more suited to work force housing.
Interesting quote from the article about Wynwood's roots:
Wynwood wasn't always a low-rent enclave. First developed from farmland around 1917 by Josiah Chaille and H.M. Anderson, Wyndwood Park -- the first ''d'' and the ''Park'' soon were dropped -- was a squarely middle class neighborhood until World War II, after which many families moved to the suburbs, Miami historian Paul George said.
It will be interesting to see the result of the real estate free fall on Wynwood.