Housing costs make it hard for essential workers to live in Miami. Lawmakers can help
For over a decade, Miami has been my home. It was where my wife and I decided to raise our two children. We fell in love with the culture, the incredible restaurants and people, and the city’s green space, which made spending time outside all the better.
That was until my landlord decided to raise my family’s rent from $1,725 to $2,400 a month, which made it impossible for us to stay.
As an Intensive Care
Unit nurse working at Jackson Memorial Hospital and a proud member of SEIU 1991, we were able to get by. That was until everything around us began to get more expensive. We began to notice it with grocery prices creeping up during the pandemic. We saw gas prices slowly tick upward. We heard of some landlords doubling or significantly raising rents, but never thought we would be upended. Until we were.
We had to move out of downtown, and what used to be a five-minute commute is now at least an hour each way. While my family likes having more space, and the affordability is better, the additional time away from them is hard.
My union has given me many things: a living wage to provide for my family, paid time off, guaranteed raises and a chance to care for my community during a pandemic. But, so far, Florida’s leaders have not done a good job of caring for us. While inflation and the pandemic have impacted everyone, nurses and our essential workers are among the most affected, and we are all suffering the consequences.
My wife is also a nurse — we make middle-class wages and live in a twoincome household. If I’m having difficulty affording to stay, I can’t imagine how hard it must be for someone making minimum wage, while facing these 20% to 30% rent hikes. In San Francisco, someone making minimum wage has to work
207 hours to afford one month’s rent on the average one bedroom apartment; in New York, you’d have to work 253 hours. In Miami? 260 hours. For one month’s rent. That’s 65 hours a week, and that doesn’t include food or gas or taxes or bills.
WHO CAN HELP?
The good news is, the governor and Legislature have the power to address this crisis through common sense legislation that makes our state livable for everyone who works a 40-hour week. And yet with a state budget of over $96 billion, the Legislature only assigned $300 million to affordable housing — that’s not even half a percent. Our state has the money, and our legislators have the power; we just need to elect leaders who will use that power to make our state a fair place to live for everyone who works for a living, especially our essential workers.
Already, we have seen a record number of nurses and caregivers begin to move away from Miami’s hospital system, moving to states with better pay and lower costs of living. Some are even leaving caregiving as a whole as the staffing levels leave us stretched thin on grueling shifts. The costs of living here and the toll our work takes on us each day make it increasingly difficult for many to stay. And this doesn’t just impact us — less staff leads to lower standards of care, which is crucial where I work in the Intensive Care Unit. Each day, my coworkers and I strive to provide the highest quality of care. We treat our patients as if they are our own family, but we can only make do with the numbers we have.
Sadly, this problem is not going to go away any time soon, and solutions are both challenging and costly. Florida’s large elder community and booming urban population will continue to increase demand on our healthcare system, and housing prices do not appear to be falling anytime soon. Unions are a great place to start in ensuring our employees have livable wages. Our state’s leaders need to ensure housing is affordable, so Floridians can raise families here for generations to come. We need to elect officials who understand our needs, support essential workers and will prioritize making housing affordable. We want to come back. It’s our home. We just need it to be affordable to actually live here.