The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

Miami Gardens: A tale of two cities

BY JOY-ANN REID

Urban center attracts businesses, struggles with crime

Miami Gardens is a study in contrasts: a fast-growing city (Miami-Dade’s third largest after Miami and Hialeah) that’s home to two major sports teams – the Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins – and a steady stream of new construction.

Chains such as Wal-Mart, Starbucks and Office Depot are springing up along Northwest 27th Avenue and other major thoroughfares.

Yet the state’s largest majority-black city, only about five years old, is also a rough metropolis that a brand-new police force is struggling to wrestle out of the hands of criminals, both petty and deadly.

At the center of the balance beam stands the city’s diminutive mayor, Shirley Gibson, 64 – a no-nonsense former Miami-Dade Police officer, but also a woman with a master’s degree in pastoral ministry who is prone to stopping young men in public and admonishing them to pull up their trousers and watch their language.

Gibson, who was born in Camilla, Ga. but who has lived in southern Florida since age 10, is passionate about the city for which she helped launch two incorporation initiatives – a failed 1996 effort and the successful push in May 2003.

“We had to fight the perception that this area was too poor, that it was impossible to start a city from nothing, that black folk just can’t do this,’’ says Gibson. “And a lot of the negativity came from black folk.’’

From the beginning, the city faced twin challenges: attracting developers and curbing the poverty and crime that had plagued the area for decades.

“When we incorporated, a large majority of the residents were already here,’’ says Gibson, who estimates that some 105,000 of the city’s estimated 109,000 residents already lived in the unincorporated areas of Carol City, Bunche Park, Norland, Andover, Lake Lucerne, Scott Lake and Opa-locka North that became Miami Gardens.

“Many of those areas already had significant issues,’’ adds Gibson, “and we inherited them.’’

The city estimates that one in five Section 8 vouchers issued in Miami-Dade County are for Miami Gardens, and the city absorbed an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the residents who were displaced when the 850 homes that made up Liberty City’s Scott-Carver housing projects were demolished in 2001.

It’s a trend unlikely to abate as downtown Miami development pushes many Overtown and Liberty City residents north, often into Miami Gardens. Gibson bristles at the prospect.

“When you have an area that’s already dealing with a population with significant socioeconomic needs; high crime rates, high drop-out rates, schools that are struggling, it’s unfair to impact that area even more,’’ says Gibson, who has drawn criticism from some housing activists for her staunch opposition to building additional low-income and workforce housing in the city. “If you give me your tired and your poor, but you don’t give me the resources to meet their needs, you’re going to have a small percentage of people wreaking havoc on the community. If people are displaced and the thinking is, if they’re black, they automatically belong in Miami Gardens (not in Pinecrest or in Hialeah,) that’s unfair to this community.’’ (more…)