Miami has become a magnet for millionaires from other parts of the United States, drawn by tax benefits, the climate, and an economy open to investments. However, this boom has come at a high cost for those who have lived in the city for decades.
A report from the Miami Herald indicated that the millionaire population in the Miami metropolitan area grew by 94% between 2014 and 2024, reaching 39,000 residents with millionaire status.
This wave of wealth, confirmed in reports from the firms Henley & Partners and New World Wealth, has been accompanied by a rise in housing prices, driving thousands of residents to leave the city.
Many of those affected are Cubans who arrived in Miami during various waves of migration and now face the risk of losing their ability to remain in the city that welcomed them because their monthly income does not allow them to maintain the high standard of living that is gradually becoming the norm in the city.
The organization Miami Homes for All estimates that Miami-Dade County has a deficit of 90,000 affordable housing units for households earning less than $75,000 a year. The price of a single-family home or a condominium is beyond the reach of workers with a median salary.
While the value of a condominium has doubled in a decade, the incomes of many workers have hardly changed. The result of these policies in South Florida is that a high percentage of Miami-Dade residents cannot afford to buy a home.
Starting May 25, 2025, the United States government will implement new restrictions on immigrants that will drastically change who can access the popular mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).
However, it is important to highlight that the limitations on buying a home are not a new issue this year. Between 2020 and 2023, the county lost more than 130,000 residents due to internal migration. Of these, around 35,000 were young people aged 20 to 30, a vital demographic for the economic and social dynamism of the city.
The money flowing from states like New York, California, New Jersey, and Illinois has caused a dramatic transformation in the urban landscape. More towers and developments, but fewer workers who can afford to live in them.
The price of land is increasingly rising. Events like those that occurred at the mobile home park Lil Abner, in Sweetwater, Miami-Dade, could become more common. There are only two weeks left until the official eviction deadline, and 200 trailers remain, most of them with their residents inside.
In the past, over 900 families found in this place an affordable housing alternative and confronted the rising rental prices in Miami. Now they are being displaced, illustrating how the process of uprooting and urban displacement operates in the heart of Miami-Dade.
Between 2021 and 2022 alone, more than $62 billion arrived in Florida, of which $8 billion remained in Miami-Dade. In contrast, many locals had to move to more affordable areas such as Homestead, Hialeah Gardens, or even other southern states.
New residents with annual incomes exceeding one million dollars see Florida as a tax haven because there is no state income tax, inheritance tax, or capital gains tax.
That allure for the wealthiest is transforming the essence of the city. The historic neighborhoods, where immigrant communities have settled for decades, are being replaced by luxury skyscrapers, investment units, and vacation properties.
In a short time, Miami could become a city for tourists and millionaires, with a large floating population and without its own identity, something it has yearned for since its founding.
The story of effort, sacrifice, and prosperity of many Cubans in Miami is at risk of being overshadowed by the influx of millionaires from abroad.
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