Little hope for homeless in ruins of Miami shanty

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Matthew Bigg
The Umoja shantytown was intended to shock. Just a few miles (kilometres) from the luxury condos of Miami Beach, it stood as a protest at the lack of affordable city housing.
Its shacks, made of cardboard and wood pallets and covered in blue plastic, would fit a slum anywhere in the world. Residents shared a kitchen and bathroom and there was no electricity.
Umoja, the name means "unity" in Swahili, was a testament to the attempt by the homeless men who built it to improve their lives. Then, one night in late April, it burned down.
Nobody was hurt and the community, on a wave of emotion, vowed to rebuild but events since suggest that a long-term solution for the former residents won't come easily.
John Cata chained himself to a table to try to stop bulldozers destroying what was left his shack. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. His former home was razed, along with the rest of Umoja.
Low-income housing on the lot in the rundown Liberty City neighborhood might one day rise where the shantytown stood, if talks between activists and the council bear fruit, said Richard Dunn, who leads a city task force on the issue.
"We are looking for someone who can provide the kind of transitional housing that fits the kind of people who were formerly (shantytown) residents," he said.
But he added that discussions were at a "very preliminary stage."
In an attempt to keep the community together some homeless people moved into a warehouse, 15 sharing a bathroom, but when they moved out the community scattered.
Some moved into shelters, a few went into rehab, others made their own living arrangements, said activist Max Rameau who helped set up Umoja.
Under a deal that led to the creation of the task force, residents agreed not to build another shantytown, denying themselves access to their most potent weapon, Rameau said.
"It does represent a loss in that we were forced off (the land) because they put up a fence. There's no way to sugar coat that," he said.
"For some of us the only thing was to take back the land in an adversarial nature," he said, adding that he was uneasy about the deal he had approved.
A decade-long rise in Miami's property values has made it harder for people on low incomes to find housing, according to Ryan Neubauer of the Miami-Dade Housing Finance Authority.
"Through the housing boom, rental housing which was traditionally more affordable has been converted into condo conversions and ownership products," he said. "It prices people out of the market and they find themselves in shelters."
Growth has cooled lately but the average price of a Miami condominium was $257,500 in 2006 up from $112,700 in 1996, according to figures from the Florida Association of Realtors.
A housing scandal exposed last year in which local government officials gave developers grants for low-income housing that was never built galvanized many homeless people to action, said Rameau.
Local authorities also pursued a policy of reducing the amount of low income housing to be built, he said.
A typical morning before the fire at Umoja showed the problems of building a community among the long-term homeless.
Some slumped on beat-up sofas in the open air. One man sat by himself scowling into the distance. The remains of the previous night's rice dinner had been thrown on the ground.
"Communes are associated with hippy white kids whose parents are wealthy. Here we (tried) to instil that same kind of thing with people (some of whom) are crackheads," Rameau said.
Cata's career path is typical of many homeless people. A spell as a young union organizer in the 1960s made him believe he was destined for great things but two years in Vietnam left him with mental scars and he spent the ensuing decades working as a mechanic, a security guard and a gardener.
Yet Cata, 63, embodied Umoja's dream of building community through shared tasks, collective decision-making and activism.
He kept his shack neat and each day watered the pot plants in a tiny 'garden' he'd surrounded with a white picket fence.
These days Cata lives in a tent on someone else's land. He said he was looking forward to facing the disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges in court, even though it could lead to prison or probation.
His goal, he said, is to help negotiate a better deal for for Umoja residents. "I want my day in court," he said. — Reuters