#BecauseMiami: Presidential Library, Hotel & Casino?

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Demonstrators gathered Monday afternoon in protest of a proposed Donald J.

Trump Presidential Library on land that was just handed over to the state by Miami-Dade College.

The move that handed over this two-and-a-half-acre employee parking lot to the state of Florida happened quickly.

The state notified MDC that it wanted the land September 16th.

Exactly seven days later, the board voted to hand over the land without any apparent debate, questioning, or public input.

The agenda only listed a vote to, quote, convey property to the state, but did not say which property.

The meeting was not broadcast, live streamed, or even recorded, and no official minutes have been provided yet.

It prompted retired FIU professor and historian Marvin Dunn to organize this protest.

My concern is that this land is being taken away from our children and their future is being given to a politician.

No president, including Obama, should get this land, much less for free.

So it outrages me that this happened in secret.

Dunn said this land was meant to expand the college and help educate future generations of students.

It's right next to a building where tens of thousands of Cuban freedom seekers pass through.

It's always a land hustle when you're trying to figure out what's going on.

It's always a real estate hustle.

It's always a land grab.

That's always what's going on in Miami when push comes to shove.

The former president of Miami-Dade College, which is one of the, I think, the largest

was community college, one of the largest colleges by student body size in the country.

The former president, Eduardo Padron, a very well-respected man in this community for a long time, said that this is unimaginable what happened here.

He helped purchase this property in 2004 for $24.8 million.

That was 20 years ago.

Why?

Because,

as he said, we're facing a huge problem in downtown.

We're landlocked, basically.

So downtown is hot.

And that was 20 years ago.

It's even hotter now.

And there's no land left available.

So they made a lot of sacrifices at the college to purchase this land to secure the future growth of this institution for its students, its faculty, for our community to have this college available, an affordable college available here.

According to the Miami-Dade tax appraiser, Roy, it is now worth $67 million.

But that's just according to the appraiser, because as we know, on the free market, everything is worth as much money as somebody is willing to pay for it.

And the word on the street is, Roy, it's worth at least $300 million.

And some estimate as high as, in this market now, you get as much as $360 million for it.

This land is directly across the street from us, shares a lot with the Freedom Tower.

It's serving now as the parking lot for the Freedom Tower.

It's a 2.63 acre lot,

and it is going to be the site for free.

This makes Mel Reese and the Marlins Park boondoggle look like a good deal because at least they paid something.

This is for free, a $360 plus

million dollar land giveaway for not just the presidential library, but what will be the first ever hotel and presidential library.

I got to look at this coming to work every day.

And I've no doubt, Roy, that by the time all is said and done, back to the future, alternate 1985, Hill Valley style, the Sophers who built Aventura and the Fountain Blue couldn't make it happen, Genting, the Malaysian casino company, couldn't make it happen.

I bet Donald Trump is able to strong arm the Florida legislature into allowing downtown Miami's Trump hotel casino and also maybe there's a book in there somewhere, library,

little asterisk or something.

Dunbar Bannon knows?

Dr.

Marvin Dunn, who led the protest this week and maybe taking some other steps after the Ron DeSantis and his cabinet voted unanimously this week to give away this land after the Board of Trustees at Miami-Dade College secretly and quietly unanimously voted to give away this land.

It was, that's the thing, too.

There was no input.

There was no public notification.

Dr.

Dunn is the author of one of my Miami must-read books that I tell everybody, if you're coming here, you've got to put this on your list, Black Miami in the 20th Century.

Dr.

Dunn, what a great economic boom it would be to have a hotel, a Trump hotel and casino right here in downtown Miami.

No?

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on.

But keep your eye on the ball.

This has nothing to do with the library.

This is not about a presidential library.

This is about a land grab to get land to build a hotel condominiums that would contain the Trump Library.

It is an incredible land grab, possibly the biggest land grab in minor history, and we simply will not stand for it.

As we speak, I am consulting with attorneys.

We will file a class action lawsuit to stop this from happening.

In fact, I'm hoping that we will be in court, at least our filing will be in court by tomorrow.

So what is your concern?

I mean, obviously, the idea that this is a land grab masquerading as a presidential library.

But beyond that, your concern is, I think, twofold here, right?

There's the educational value of the property, and then there's the location specifically of the property.

My main concern, frankly, is that they're taking this land away from our kids.

This land belongs to our kids in their future.

So that really insults and hurts me.

They're doing that and then giving it to a politician for free.

I don't think Obama should be given this land.

No president should be given this land in a way, obviously for free and that hurts our kids.

That's my main concern.

Second, they're going to put not just this library and hotel, but they're going to build condominiums.

The expectation is that they can put towers there that can go up 100 stories on this game bay.

That's what they're doing.

They're putting in condominiums, a hotel that may rise as high as 100 stories on land that they're taking from our kids.

And to be clear, This would be the first in the history of United States presidential libraries.

Is that correct?

To have a condo, hotel, retail, restaurant component.

That's right.

For a man who has not cracked a book since fifth grade, except mine comps.

I'm sorry, Dr.

Dunn, what evidence do you have that he read a book in fifth grade?

Stop.

You're worse than I am.

So,

Dr.

Dunn, also,

as noted in that CBS report that we were playing earlier, this is directly next door.

I mean, it shares a lot with what is known as the Freedom Tower, sometimes called the Ellis Island of the South, where Cuban immigrants brought to Miami early on in the Exodus slept on concrete floors and were processed and welcomed into this country, land of milk and honey, an opportunity to fulfill their American dream, and in fact, did by making Miami-Dade County a minority, majority community.

And I wonder the symbolism of that in light of this administration's action with respect to our immigrant population.

You know, we must respect that Freedom Tower as important to the history of this community and particularly to our Cuban-American citizens.

That building is symbolic.

It's important.

We must protect it from now on.

But to erect a structure next to it that memorializes a president who has been the most suppressive.

of freedom in the history of this country next to that building that's an irony that escapes me.

Donald Trump has no business having a building next to the Freedom Tower, supposedly representing his stance on freedom.

The man has been the most repressive president in American history.

That building should not be erected next to the Freedom Tower.

Why do you suppose that all this happened very quickly?

I mean, in a matter of 10 days.

10 days.

Yet, I think all in 10 days, from the time the state contacted the Board of Trustees, the Board of Trustees votes kicks it back to DeSantis and his cabinet why do you suppose this all happened as quickly and quietly as it did because it's a dirty deal because it's a shady deal that they should not even be doing that's why they've been trying to hide it the fact that now this has come to light i think is a surprise to them this was not supposed to happen secret deal i'm supposed to go through and we were not supposed to even notice it there was no discussion before the meeting otherwise that would have been illegal The record says there was no discussion during the meeting, and then the vote was unanimous.

And then the state steps in an hour or two later, says okay it's going to trump so how did that happen without discussion something in the military and clean rabbits to say

dundash history.com doctor you do these teach the truth tours before we go tell us a little bit about what that is i know last time you were on the show we were talking about you know book bans and revisionist history all the good thing the upside of slavery all that crazy shit that was happening and it still is happening in the state of florida tell us about the teach the truth Truth tours.

Well, very unfortunately, my Minister Center for Racial Justice received a grant of $1.5 million from the Mellon Foundation over three years to take people, mainly college students, to places in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi where lynchings took place, where the worst racial violence took place, so that people could walk the ground where the blood was shed.

and be transformed in our understanding of our racial history and racial violence.

That's what we do, all expenses paid by the center.

We've done about a dozen of these tours, and they have been transformational for the people of God.

But isn't that just so depressing, as the president would say?

Isn't that just all the negative stuff, really?

You should see the white kids and the black kids embracing, crying, talking to each other in the aftermath of these visits to graves where people were lynched.

There's none of that pointing the finger.

There's no blaming white people.

We're doing this to understand our history and come together.

There's no guilt, blame, anger.

It's understanding and compassion and coming together to understand our history.

Dunn-History.com, Marvin Dunn.

If you want to understand Miami today, you have to read his book, Black Miami in the 20th Century.

Marvin Dunn, thanks so much for joining us again.

Thank you for having me.

Enjoy being mister.

Thank you.

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Strap in.

This is the craziest Miami story never told.

Monique Pardot-Pope is running for Miami Beach City Commission.

We have public order laws that have to be enforced.

She introduced herself to voters by saying, I come from a Cuban family that believed in deep sacrifice, service of others, and standing up for what's right.

But what she didn't tell voters is, her father, who she honors as my hero, my guardian angel, my guiding light in the sky, was Miami's notorious neo-Nazi serial killer, Manuel Pardo.

A coke-dealing corrupt cop sentenced to die in Florida's electric chair nine times.

On May 7th, 1986, 43 cops, including a SWAT team and the bomb squad, raided Monique Pardo Pope's family apartment to arrest her father, Manuel Pardo, who slaughtered six men and three women in three months, beating and shooting them in cold blood.

His motive?

Greed.

The individual allegedly wanted a larger piece of the pie, so to speak.

The men were drug dealers and Pardo was ripping them off, stealing their cash, credit cards, and cocaine.

Police say evidence linking Pardo to the execution-style slangs was found in Pardo's home.

In the Pardo family's Lago Grande Hyalia apartment, cops found Polaroid pictures of his murder victims, a diary where he meticulously recorded the killings, names, dates, how many kilos he stole.

Also, there was a Nazi flag hanging on the wall, 500 books about Hitler, three rifles engraved with swastikas, and the family's Doberman pincher that Monique's mass-murdering dad had tattooed with a swastika on his leg.

Manuel Pardo was a Marine Corps veteran who began his law enforcement career with the Florida Highway Patrol.

He was fired in 1979 for falsifying 100 traffic tickets, then hired by the Sweetwater Police Department.

In January 1981, Pardo was charged in a series of police brutality cases, but those charges were eventually dropped.

He was fired for lying and falsifying police records to cover up for a fellow Coke-dealing sweetwater cop caught with 242 kilos.

Then he became a serial killer.

And despite being arrested for nine murders, Pardo bragged to a fellow inmate that cops missed three more bodies in homestead.

At trial, Pardo used the so-called Charles Bronson defense, claiming he was a vigilante ridding the world of scum.

These to me were not human beings.

They're parasites and they're leeches.

And they have no right to be alive.

Manuel murdered one of the men inside a Honda belonging to his wife, Monique Pardo Pope's mother, which was then cleaned and re-upholstered.

Pardo murdered Sarah Moussa because she was a lesbian, throwing her on the floor and emptying his gun into her.

She was shot 10 times with defensive gunshot wounds on her hands.

When I see my daughter Gaya Chop and no harvest.

Pardo shot Daisy Ricard five times, but she survived.

So he bludgeoned her with a bat and ran over her with a car, crushing her brain and and tearing off her right ear.

Pardo was proud of being a mass murderer.

He enjoyed the killings.

He even described them to people so graphically, they said it sounded almost sexual.

No, it was not wrong to kill these people.

Somebody had to kill these people.

Pardo told the jury that Hitler was a great man and agreed with him that Jews, blacks, and homosexuals were inferior.

That sort of turned off the Jews and the blacks on the jury.

He said his only regret about murdering nine people was that he didn't murder 99 people.

The only regret that I have is that instead of nine, I wish I could have been up here for 99.

Manuel confessed to the murders.

His lawyer and mother said he was insane.

How many people do you know that think like that?

That's abnormal.

But over his attorney's strong objections, Manuel Pardo spoke directly to the jury.

Ladies and gentlemen, jury, I'd like you all to disregard the statements you heard from my parents.

I am a soldier, and as a soldier, I asked to be given the death penalty.

The jury sentenced him to death nine times.

And now this one-man judge, jury, and executioner is headed for death row.

On December 11th, 2012, after the electric chair was outlawed, Pardo died by lethal injection when then Florida Governor Rick Scott signed his death warrant.

His last meal was lashonasado, rice and beans, plantains, and Cuban coffee.

Pardo's last words were, I am ready to ride the midnight train to Georgia, airborne forever.

I love you, Mishi Baby, referring to his daughter, Monique Pardo Pope.

He told the court he committed these heinous murders to make his daughter proud.

Understand my motive, what I did, because I want my daughter to be proud of her father.

And she is.

Monique has never repudiated her father or his crimes.

She's embraced him and celebrates him.

My eternal best friend.

There's no one better suited to have been my daddy, and I will forever be proud to have been your little girl.

And in posts commemorating his birthday and Father's Day, Monique Pardot-Pope wrote, hashtag midnight train to Georgia and Airborne Forever, quoting her neo-Nazi serial killer father's last words on death row.

I think I sent a significant message to the community, and I hope there's other people out there that'll follow my steps.

When I first broke this story on social media last week, I emailed Monique Pardo-Pope, inviting her to join me today on the podcast to share her compelling story about her complicated family history, her relationship with her father, her public comments about him as an adult, overcoming adversity to become the lawyer and the person and the candidate that she is today.

I thought it would do the voters of Miami Beach a lot of good to hear it directly from her.

Instead of replying to my invitation, Pardo Pope doubled down on dishonesty and attacked The Messenger in a failed effort to silence my accurate reporting about her family.

She released a statement where she starts off by saying, I have not hidden who I am, but she's definitely been less than truthful with voters about her background.

She's been campaigning for a powerful public position overseeing a billion-dollar budget in taxpayer money, citing her family background.

In her statement, she goes on to accuse me of smears, attacks, and bullying.

But the truth is not a smear or an attack.

Again, facts don't bully.

I stand by my story and note that nowhere in her statement does Pardo Pope challenge the substance of my reporting.

And she's still being untruthful about who her father really is.

She writes, the courts found my father to be mentally ill due to health problems.

The exact opposite is true.

The facts are, Pardo's defense attorneys repeatedly repeatedly argued he was insane, but three court-appointed mental health experts testified he was legally sane.

And the insanity defense was rejected by the jury, who called it a made-up defense, and rejected by every single appellate court, all the way to the Florida Supreme Court.

And then she went too far, inventing a defamatory lie about me.

Pardo Pope told The New Times, Billy Corbyn has made a career of slinging mud, which has even resulted in losing a defamation case.

That is a total lie.

There is no such case.

She just made it up.

The only defamation case I've ever been involved in resulted in a $412,000 award to my side.

We can disagree and have good faith debates with facts, but we cannot deliberately invent and spread malicious lies.

Because of her defamatory lie, I was forced to send this cease and desist letter.

As an officer of the court who attended an excellent law school, Pardo Pope should know better.

I hope she understands now and will consider publicly apologizing, correcting her misinformation, and joining me here on the Because Miami podcast to share an open and honest dialogue with her voters, who have a right to know the truth so they can make an informed decision when they vote this November.

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I was going to say the U is back, baby, but we lost the bye week.

Somehow we dropped from two to three.

Yeah, that's what happens when Oregon beats Penn State.

Apparently, they jump the hurricanes.

Robbed.

It's okay.

The Canes are still the number three ranked team in the country.

The Miami Dolphins on the power rankings are, what, 29 out of 32, right?

Yeah, and only because they beat somebody that was below them with the Jets.

Yeah.

It's okay.

Miami is still number one in a lot of things.

Porjemplo.

So according to a new global survey, Miamians are paying more per meal to eat out than anywhere else in the country.

The study ranked more than 175 cities worldwide based on the average cost of dining out, the price of coffee, and beer against local wages earned.

Miami landed 72nd overall, worse than any other U.S.

city.

A mid-range, three-course meal costs about $60 a person.

$60 per person might not sound like huge, but...

$60 per person doesn't sound huge?

Well, what what I'm saying is, is that like if you're going to indulge or go out every once in a while and treat yourself or your family, but a single meal eats up 1.4%

of earnings when measured against Miami's average monthly salary, which is only 4,230 bucks.

So this is part of the study is like compared to earnings.

So everything is too damn expensive, but also nobody's making any money is the other problem.

But don't worry, we're number one in other things too, Roy.

For example, Miami has topped UBS's list of global cities at risk of a real estate bubble.

We did it.

We did it, guys.

So this is really exciting.

UBS Major Duty International Bank says that Miami is, for the second year in a row, ranked number one for a potential real estate crash out of all the cities in the world.

This is a worldwide rash, not just like the AFC East, right?

Okay.

This is a power race.

It's just Buffalo.

No, yeah, it's just only Buffalo or the Jets.

We're talking about every city in the world.

And why is that, do you suppose, that we're primed for a crash?

Well, the United Way has put out its latest ALICE report.

The ALICE report is a really interesting and depressing thing.

It's an acronym for asset-limited, income-constrained, employed.

That means people who have jobs, sometimes multiple jobs, and how they are struggling to just survive.

For example, you can see on the screen now, 54% of Miami-Dade County households are below the ALICE threshold, which means that they are basically, we're basically living paycheck to paycheck.

And this is versus the 2023 ALICE report, which had it at 51%.

So it is trending in the wrong direction.

And what does that mean?

That means that people are,

again, it's kind of compared to wages.

So in Miami, Dade County, the current median household income, and this is countywide, is $72,311.

The current household survival budget is $89,844.

So we're all over $12,000 underwater just to survive in Miami-Dade County.

And when you look across the municipalities of Miami-Dade, obviously different municipalities are suffering more than others.

The worst off is North Miami at 68%,

which is Alice and the poverty, below the poverty line.

66% in Hialeah, 62% in Homestead, 71%, I'm sorry, in Leisure City.

That tops it.

And 56% are either below the poverty line or struggling to make ends meet in the city of Miami.

And yet we're just giving away $300 million

lots of property.

Another major problem here with the imminent, what the experts think might be an imminent real estate collapse and bust,

is this.

This Venezuelan business owner said the political instability has led to a 20% drop in revenue.

It's affected your clients as well as the people who work here.

Here in Florida, Trump won almost 70% of the Cuban-American vote in 2024, along with 61% of Doral, home to the largest Venezuelan-American population in the U.S.

They used us.

Adelis Ferro is the co-founder and executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus.

How is the Venezuelan community feeling right now, especially in the context of these deportations?

Desperate, terrified.

There are people with mental health issues.

There are people with panic attacks, anxiety attacks.

They'd rather to die

than go back to Venezuela.

And then it's a lot of people.

I have those messages.

The ripple effects affecting families

and businesses.

A lot of people have already invested in businesses here and they've stopped because they just don't know what the future brings.

Still, experts say the current turmoil may not hurt the Republican Party.

The city of Doral, home to the Trump National Doral, where the G20 summit will be held, is known as Doral Zuela because it probably is the largest and most vibrant Venezuelan community outside of Venezuela itself.

And it has been growing by leaps and bounds with working-class Venezuelans, wealthy Venezuelans predominantly.

And now, this incredible report this week from the Wall Street Journal says that this once-vibrant housing scene has been hit by an exodus of migrants.

Deborah Acosta is the journalist working on that.

She is out of Miami and she is joining us now.

Deborah, what is the data on this showing?

And we'll talk about why people are fleeing in a moment, but what are the numbers actually indicating?

Yeah, so this real estate data often lags, but we're looking at vacancy rates at apartment buildings across Doral.

And in some cases, we're seeing apartments that have a more than 10% vacancy rate.

And according to the leasing agents in those buildings, this vacancy uptick is due to the fact that many of these Venezuelans are fleeing the area.

Your report says that vacancy rates for apartments in municipalities surrounding Doral are at about 4.3%.

But in Doral, from late last year, where it was at 5.6%,

it's now up to 6.5%.

And you're saying that's still lagging.

That report we just saw earlier was from this past July, where business owners in Doral were already taking hits of upwards of 20% in sales and revenue.

So you're saying that's probably even worse right now?

In certain buildings it is.

Yeah, absolutely.

Some of the newer construction buildings where a lot of these new migrants were living, those are seeing a big hit.

And there was a moment in time this year where these individuals really believed and the Trump administration was making it clear that they would have to leave by September.

An appeals court in California has been able to extend that to October of next year, but that just occurred a few days ago.

And so now these individuals have a little bit of breathing room for the rest of next year.

But basically, after October of next year, a lot of these individuals are going to have to figure out something else for themselves because we're not seeing any pathways for them to be able to stay in the country past that date.

Yeah, it seems extremely unlikely that the Trump administration will extend any kind of leniency or TPS-like temporary protective status of any kind.

You're on the ground in Doral.

There's also confusion, right?

People are erring on the side of caution to not get, I don't know, caught up and sent to Alligator Alcatraz or some ice prison somewhere, right?

So it's not even just the deadline as much as it is like people just don't know what's going on.

They maybe can't afford an immigration attorney to, and even the immigration attorneys don't really know what's going on.

It is absolutely nuts.

Absolutely.

Yeah, there was a lot of confusion, and there still is.

At this point, though, the individuals with TPS

are able to extend until October.

However, again, no one knew this until it was almost too late.

So a lot of people self-deported, particularly people with small children who don't want to be caught up in this alligator alcatraz or whatever else.

They don't want to deal with federal agents or getting deported.

And so a lot of people with actually very great contributors to the economy, people with great jobs, went ahead and self-deported or went to other parts of the country to avoid all of this situation.

And again, a lot of these people who are still here, I mean, their days are counted.

They only have until October, if that at all.

So it's a huge problem for this particular municipality in Miami, which really depends a lot on these immigrants who have been coming in and really growing that city, like you said, to the level that it's at today.

But it's not just Doral.

I mean, we have immigrants all over South Florida that really make up a huge portion of the population and make a huge difference in terms of the rental population in particular.

And so, we're going to see the spillover effects of this all over South Florida.

What makes Doral a really interesting case study is the fact that so many Venezuelans live there, and Venezuelans are such a huge portion of the immigrants who really benefited from this TPS program that's getting phased away by the Trump administration.

It's kind of a bummer, too, because Doral is arguably an example for kind of responsible growth.

It's been growing by leaps and bounds, but like there's a hospital, and then there's like what appears to be like reasonably priced workforce housing and rentals and shopping and restaurants and things and kind of in scale with a suburban community like this.

It was all kind of lovely in a way.

It was like not what you see in Miami where you're just like growth on top of growth and condos next to condos on top of condos just to the sky.

It all just seemed kind of in the design and the scale of the neighborhood or of this city.

It's definitely a huge success story.

I mean, it's grown by leaps and bounds, like you said.

It's very balanced.

It's a live, work, play environment to the extreme.

I mean, there's like huge office headquarters there.

Univision and other, like Royal Caribbean has an office there.

And so it's a growing space.

And guess what?

Even our president saw a huge opportunity there when he invested and bought that very large property, the Trump Doral.

And he himself has said what a vibrant, wonderful community it is.

And that's why he invested there.

He's bringing the G20 summit there next year.

And actually, he's planning his organization, the Trump organization is planning on building some conduit units there.

So, I mean,

who's going to live there?

Deborah, I got to ask you, not once, but twice in your article.

You use the word fled, F-L-E-D, fled, to describe what is happening with the Venezuelan community in Daral.

This term, and I used the word flee earlier, kind of borrowing from your article.

This term is usually reserved for when people are escaping third world dictatorships or authoritarian regimes, when people are fleeing Cuba, fleeing Venezuela, usually for Miami in that case.

Why the term fled?

What are some of the anecdotes you've heard of people like just sort of up and skipping town in the middle of the night?

Well, like we said, a lot of these are people who have white collar jobs.

They saw a pathway here into the United States when the Biden administration started opening up more opportunities for people to migrate here.

And so a lot of these individuals are not used to living in in the fringes of society.

They're used to being somewhere if they're fully legal in that country and if they have a job, if they have a future, right?

And so particularly people with small children families, they suddenly saw that stuff drying up for them when there was this big change from the administration.

Why would they stick around?

They're like, well, you know, I've got a better opportunity for me in this other country or even back in Venezuela in some cases.

So one example that I found quite shocking is like a family that just like disappeared from one day to the next from their single family home.

They were renting the home.

They'd been there for two years with their two children and basically stopped paying rent from one month to the next.

The landlord was like, what's going on?

These people have always been great at paying rent and beautiful family, et cetera.

It's like, what's going on?

Why aren't you paying?

Why didn't you pay the rent?

Why are you skipping out?

Oh.

I'm so sorry.

We had to like divert all of our funds to immigration attorneys to figure out what the hell is going on and what's, you know, what we're going to do next.

And it got to the point where it was like, okay, we're going to have to leave.

I'm so sorry.

left the keys in the house from one day to the next, disappear, leave most of their furniture behind, their personal belongings, didn't even take out the trash.

And so the landlord and the realtor are like, we've never seen this before.

This is wild.

Like, why would people decide to disappear from one day to the next from this community that's never happened before in their entire careers?

And so that was where I was like, okay, this is super interesting.

And then you've got the leasing agents all complaining that they're losing tenants from one day to the next.

No, nobody's renewing.

Like, what's happening?

Why?

Oh, well, because I'm no longer going to be able to be here legally.

Or I've lost my

broker's license because I no longer have a current driver's license.

I can't renew it because, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And so these individuals don't see a future for themselves.

They're educated.

They have other options and they just get up and leave.

So are you saying that family is not getting their security deposit back?

That's right.

And so it also brings up other issues in the fair housing law.

You know, there's complicating issues here where landlords, if they see temporary on someone's license, they don't want to let them in.

They don't want to rent to them.

So they're going to discriminate against them effectively and not be able and not rent them a home.

This is actively happening, not only with the single-family homes, but in certain buildings.

The policy is, according to the leasing agents I spoke with, if somebody has a temporary status or even if they're applying for asylum we don't want them here

you don't have to like go through and like when you're renewing the leases of the people who already live here you don't have to look through their documents to see where they're at but if it's somebody new no we're pushing them away and so these people these leasing agents they say in many cases more than half of the people that are coming in to get an apartment they have to turn away because they're all temporary people Deborah, we're seeing, you know, last question, a $400 million county budget deficit that had to be shored up with taxes going up, though they always argue.

Oh, the millage rate isn't going up, but we're still paying more in taxes.

Miami Beach, I think, suffered from just 23 to 24, an approximately 10% hit in resort taxes, which means from 24 to 25, it's going to be, I mean, who knows how much worse it could be.

It could be double or triple that.

Is there a follow-up story here to be had in Doral and surrounding areas, the resulting kind of overall economic effect, not just the real estate, although real estate is kind of everything in this town.

The condos and the and you said the upside is the rental prices are obviously going to bottom out here, I guess, in Doral.

I guess that's good news for locals, I suppose.

But, you know, is there an overall picture here to paint of an economy teetering or in slow motion or in fast forward to collapse?

You know,

I focus a lot on the real estate.

So

I wonder about the apartment buildings.

We have a lot of new, brand new apartment buildings that are coming onto the market and have been coming onto the market.

And so I do see a glut of apartment buildings, particularly the luxury apartment buildings.

And that's actually a follow-up story I'm writing about now is like, what's going to happen to all these apartments that are vacant and can be problematic for an economy, particularly one like ours that really focuses on real estate and really depends on real estate.

But in terms of like the working population, you know, we are a very retiree heavy community, not only in South Florida, but all of Florida.

We have a lot of retirees down here.

And we really do depend on immigrants for working age population.

That population is coming down.

I mean, if you look at the census figures, it's clear we have fewer and fewer working age people in our communities here.

And once these working age people that have been coming in start coming out, then we have even less.

And so that definitely becomes problematic, right?

Who is going to do the work in Florida?

There's palm trees and sunshine and beaches, but who's going to be actually like getting the work done in Florida to keep it pumping?

That's an open question at the moment.

As my friend Peter Zeluski of Condo Vultures says, as goes the condo market, so goes the economy in Miami-Dade County.

So when you talk about vacancies, when you talk about rents coming down, again, on the one hand, us locals are like, yeah, you know, and on the other hand, it's like, well, like you said, who's going to work here?

Who's spending money here?

And when your kind of sole economic engine is growth, where is there to go from here but down?

So, C-Roy, some good news.

Miami is number one.

Yay.

Deborah Acosta, read her at wsj.com in the Wall Street Journal.

Thank you so much for being here.

It's a pleasure as always, Billy.

Thank you so much for having me.

See, a pleasure is always.

I never get that.

You sure don't.

Yeah, I mean, it was Billy.

This was really a great obligation.

Just ask Eileen Higgins about this.

Yes.

Just you wait, Eileen Higgins.

Cocaines.

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