In Miami-Dade County, Federal Funding For "Affordable Housing" Displaces Working Class Minorities Of New Republican Coalition.
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Sweetwater, Florida - The displacement of Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park residents in Sweetwater, Miami-Dade covered in your correspondent’s last report is being engineered by Raul F. Rodriguez of CREI Holdings, who owns the property. But investigating the support for Rodriguez’s projects opens a window onto bigger plans for growth that threaten Miami-Dade via the con of “affordable housing”—which, in the end, benefits Democrats backed by Washington, D.C.
Raul F. Rodriguez and his Backers
Unlike his father and earlier Miami developers of neighborhoods such as Coral Gables, Raul F. Rodriguez doesn’t live in the neighborhood whose land he owns and whose residents he is uprooting. His public profile suggests that he is playing to a different audience -- powerful, Democrat-leaning Miami movers, some with ties to Washington, D.C. He speaks about the benefits of affordable housing to The Miami Herald, which ran a complimentary feature on Li’l Abners I and II in 2022. (“When Rodriguez isn’t working on development plans, the avid rock climber is preparing to continue climbing the seven highest mountains in the world. He thinks the difficulty…parallels the challenges that come with developing affordable housing in Miami-Dade.”) He’s easily findable online via his nonprofit Li’l Abner Foundation, which funds “tutoring, dance, tae-kwon-do and archery” programs for students K-12.
Most important, by becoming a vocal champion of affordable housing, he has cultivated an audience of powerful officials invested in his growth. In May, 2022, the County gave Rodriguez a $2 million grant to cope with unexpected runover costs on Li’l Abner II’s construction. In February of the next year, 2023, Miami-Dade County put out a statement about the opening of Li’l Abner II, and Mayor Daniella Levine Cava attended the ceremony. In December of that year, the County approved the Mayor taking the necessary steps to receive a $4 million grant direct from HUD for construction on Li’l Abner III. Rodriguez might be a private businessperson, but his projects are not free market transactions; they are government-backed.
And these government grants are not backing what they say they are backing, that is, actually affordable housing. The $4 million grant for Li’l Abner III states that “40% of the units, or 131 units” will be for residents earning no more than “ 80% of area median income,” which just qualifies them as “Section 8” housing, since 80% is the highest limit for Section 8. But “60% of the units, or 197 units,” will be “at 120% of area median income.”
This already puts Sweetwater residents at a disadvantage, since the area median income being used in the calculation appears to be Miami-Dade's, which is $71,000 as opposed to Sweetwater's at $53,159. Rodriguez is also playing to changing income demographics, since Miami-Dade's area median income has grown from $68,300 in 2022 to $71,000 this year, which means more prospective tenants who can afford rents on the higher end of the "affordable housing" scale. Reportedly, the soon-to-be-built developments on the land where the trailer park homes now stand will be open to “families who earn between 60% to 140% of Miami-Dade’s median income…” Put another way, only 20% of this income stretch will qualify as Section 8 housing. This gives Rodriguez enormous range to market the apartments to higher-income residents.
Washington, D.C. HUD Democrats Team Up with Democrats in Miami-Dade
On paper, support for Rodriguez’s “affordable housing” vision crosses party lines. The $2 million to cover overrun costs on Li’l Abner II came from the Democratic-majority County Commissioners, and the $4 million from HUD for Rodriguez was approved by them, while the $4 million was initially requested from HUD by Republican U.S. Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart. But Diaz-Balart doesn’t govern the growth of Miami-Dade, Democrats do. It’s Democrats who have pushed the last four years of breakneck growth that’s created the environment in which Rodriguez is thriving—in tandem with the federal government.
From 2021 through 2024, the total yearly sum granted to Miami-Dade by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Community Planning and Development Office, which seeks to develop viable communities…for low and moderate income persons” through “the development of partnerships among all levels of government and the private sector,” was roughly $19 million. This has been padded by $17.7 million in 2021 from the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s COVID legislation.
Bigger infusions came besides from HUD’s Public and Indian Housing Office, after a 2022 visit with County Mayor Levine Cava from HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, who explained that “I decided I was going to Miami, to the epicenter of the housing crisis in this country.” The next year, Levine Cava announced that the county received a $40 million HUD grant via the Public and Indian Housing Office for transforming a community in South Dade into a “resilient mixed-income community.” The following year, the County received $39.9 million from HUD’s Public and Indian Housing Office for building affordable housing in the historically black neighborhood of Overtown.
The Housing Con
But both of these projects are less helpful than they might seem at first glance. In practice, “mixed income community,” the description for the South Dade development, is a weasel word: a phrase which in practice can mean either a complex built for “moderate and low-income families” or one with “a small percentage of [truly affordable units],” which are often included “to qualify for municipal subsidies.” And, when it comes to Overtown's development helping its residents, one politically-connected source poured cold water on the idea, speaking about a past development in the historically black neighborhood: “They built a supermarket and an apartment complex we’d been pushing for years, then the rents were so high nobody from the neighborhood could live there.” Public comments from neighborhood residents echo this concern about the current Overtown redevelopment. And, tellingly, other massive proposed developments in these areas are leaving artfully undefined the question of just what “affordable housing” means.
Insider testimony suggests that it doesn’t mean most people currently in the neighborhood can afford it. One well-placed player in the Miami-Dade real estate scene was blunt about what affordable housing means in practice: "It's a bullsh-t term. The question is, affordable for whom, and when you start asking the real questions to find that out--how big are the units, how many, how high in air, what are rents--the 'affordable housing' label usually comes apart." This makes logical sense: after all, it’s the new arrivals, the higher-income displacers who can afford un-affordable "affordable" units, who really benefit the county government. As wealth has poured in, taxable property values have skyrocketed: 10.2, 12.3, and 10 percent in 2021, 2022, and 2023 respectively. So far, Levine Cava has played to the electorate by avoiding raising property taxes, but “property-tax revenue continues to grow from new construction and rising property values…and the county is predicting a revenue squeeze in the coming years,” which can be solved by higher property taxes.
Meantime, government spending has increased: in 2025, the start of Levine Cava’s second term, “Miami-Dade is projected to spend about $560 per resident…up nearly 8% after four years,” a greater increase than under her Republican predecessor. Last year’s actual county budget increased 9.4 percent from the year before; and the newly proposed 2025 county budget represents another 9 percent increase. Some of this funding is made available for “water warrior” Levine Cava’s and her allies’ real priority, which I’ve recently written about: using growth as an excuse to enact costly and onerous policies to “fight” climate change.
All the while, Levine Cava is moving for more revenue-producing growth. She’s fast-tracked permitting and proposed policies promoting “densification”: allowing multiple house building on single lots, no matter what kinds of neighborhoods this creates or whether it encourages rentership not buying. Others of her housing policies are interferences in genuine free market transactions, and band-aids on the bigger housing problem she’s helping create. For example, according to The Miami Herald: "In 2022, Levine Cava created a grant program to fund lawyers for low-income tenants fighting eviction from landlords over unpaid rent and other alleged lease violations. In Levine Cava’s 2025 budget proposal, the program costs $1 million, on top of $10 million in 2022 for landlords who agreed to keep middle-class rents flat for three years.”
The Republican Opportunity
Levine Cava’s agenda matches a push nationally as Democrats, struggling to recover from a decisive November defeat, are using housing crunches to cast themselves as champions of renters and affordable housing. Not surprisingly, their proposals involve massive government interference in the free market. Last year, by contrast, Florida Republicans passed the most wide-ranging legislation, the Florida Live Local Act of 2023, in recent state history trying to carefully address the housing crunch while preserving incentives for free market development.
But, unfortunately, the law has an unintended Achilles Heel: “affordable housing” is all over it. Today, according to one politically connected source, “affordable and workforce housing” is Tallahassee’s phrase of the moment—exactly the phrase Raul F. Rodriguez uses to describe the buildings for which the Li’l Abner residents are being displaced. Tellingly, affordable housing is defined by Florida statutes, like it is by HUD, as amounting to no more than 30% of a family’s income; in Florida’s case so long as they make 120% or less of their area’s median income. This is a very wide stretch.
Unless Florida Republicans tighten up what they mean by this phrase and make the term apply to people like those in Sweetwater, displacements will continue, and “growth” will continue to benefit Democrats and their constituents. But Washington Republicans have a role to play too: (1) by tightening the requirements on what kind of affordable housing HUD will fund; and (2) by passing an executive order refusing to provide HUD funding for projects that involve displacements. Both of these moves would be good politics, since, in Miami-Dade and across the nation, Republicans won the 2024 election by bringing into their coalition those most hurt by the building boom: working class minorities.
When it comes to Li’l Abner residents about to be displaced, there’s a likely fix available that’s been used in other neighborhoods in Miami via the County government: open up Section 8 housing to these residents, allowing them at least comfortable shelter. The County should also hold hearings and compel Raul F. Rodriguez to testify as to the hows and whys of his decision to displace 3,000 mostly older citizens around the holidays—in order to ensure the county government never funds such a decision again.
Again, for Republicans to make this an issue would be good politics. But it would also be good humanity, since the story of Li’l Abner begins and ends with a bottom line fact. This Christmas season, while Raul F. Rodriguez fundraises for his foundation or plans another mountaineering adventure and Daniela Levine Cava oversees the infusion of unprecedented HUD funding into Miami-Dade, 3,000 county residents who’ve spent their lives playing by the rules are getting ready to leave their homes—to go out below the housing line into the uncertain future, the proverbial cold.
Any of these rich land owners being evicted for constructing "affordable" housing when none is available elsewhere?
When does the shooting start?