They love their houses; historic designation or not
Frank Schnidman is a land use attorney, who has been helping neighbors in Village West with their homes. These neighbors live in the wooden homes that have been declared historic by the City of Miami, only the owners don't want this designation. Frank made a little video here, a very interesting video, where the neighbors who own the homes speak out about their love for the homes but their disdain for the historic designation.
The homeowners want to have their homes removed from historic designation. They feel that they were pushed into it and feel the historic designation hurts their rights as property owners. They don't want to be dictated to as to what they should or should not do with their homes.
They were not consulted by the city before the issue came up. The owners feel that their hands will be tied every time they want to make a change to the house. Many of the house now have been renovated and were turned into affordable housing for the owners' tenants, along with being long-term investment for the owners.
Now here is another video below, these neighbors want the houses declared historic.
To me the solution seems to be to not force the historic designation, but have the City receive first rights of refusal if the neighbors would like to sell the homes. This way the City can pay the homeowners a fair price and then save the houses before developers get them. For those that want historic designation, maybe the City can help them out with repairs and other expenses.
Earlier this week the City Commission voted 4-1 in favor of neighbors who wish to appeal historic designation to their houses. Remember those two houses on Charles Avenue at 3295 and 3297? Well they are not historic now, so the owner can demolish them now.
posted by Tom Falco at 4:00 AM
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3 Comments:
This is exactly what I kept trying to tell people before the historic designation vote. Every successful historic designation movement began as a grass-roots effort, not a top-down diktat. It was incredibly tone deaf, at best (arrogant, at worst), for Ken Russell and a bunch of white Grove activists to dictate to these homeowners what they should be allowed to do with their properties.
I watched the whole thing on live video. I did not observe your 'white activists' pushing this, although there are many neighbors of this community who support a lot of things the residents of Village West are trying to do to preserve their heritage and protect from rampant gentrification. The people who spoke, including Thelma Gibson, were eloquent in their passion. It can be argued the process was not good and there certainly seems to be a case for an 'opt in' from people across the Grove who are in homes that might qualify, for historic designation. But I've heard more than one person sling those kinds of insults at a nebulous 'white activist minority'. It makes me sick, this kind of blatantly racist dialogue. FYI, member of HOTA (the Village West homeowners association) and the Village Council (1/3 of whom live in Village West and have family going back generations) are supportive of the overall thematic designation. So let's leave unsubstantiated race issues out of this and pull together as a community to help preserve our heritage with a process that is fair to everyone and actually results in something good being done. I applaud Ken Russel's intention and passion for the issue. At least he's put his heart into the game.
Thelma Gibson was use by K Rusell . One month back she was in the same commission Chamber asking to have one of her houses remove from the list . From one day to the other she have the house removed from the list . But this is how we do politics in the west grove We do politics with the color of the skin and thousands of dollars from the city Go to Thelma Gibson Fundation.FACTS
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