Those economic divisions are also racial divisions. Nearly one-fifth live below the poverty line. Forty percent of the households in Miami-Dade County - of which the City of Miami is part - are working poor, with little savings and few assets. If you look past the glittering skyscrapers and mega-yachts, you will see that the City of Miami has a relative rate of inequality similar to that of developing countries like Paraguay and Colombia. total - and a minimum wage of $8.56 an hour. This is a place that has 35 billionaires - about 5 percent of the U.S. To see why lower-income residents are likely to be on the losing end of the dramatic changes bearing down on Miami-Dade, you need to understand a little about South Florida’s inherent inequality. The irrational exuberance of the high-end real estate sector is fed, in part, by foreign investment seeking to park excess capital in luxury, high-rise beachfront condos. Still, the developers, real estate agents, and many buyers continue to play a long con against the rising tide, pretending that all is well in South Florida, even though some 10 percent of its land area will be under water if the ocean rises just 2 feet. The science of what is going to happen here - higher seas, increased heat, intensifying storms - is certain. In fact, mismanaged efforts to adapt could exacerbate a tale of two cities - both sinking. Yet the powers attempting to help the region cope with global warming are barely focused on these inequalities, and that lack of vision could seriously complicate efforts to save South Florida. And low-income communities, which during Miami’s initial expansion were shunted away from prime waterfront property and often segregated onto the region’s high ground, now face a fight to hold onto that elevated land as developers covet property situated away from rising seas. Unlike the jet-set owners of high-end real estate in Miami-Dade, the region’s middle-class residents - who have most of their savings tied up in their homes - face the prospect of generations of wealth being wiped out when the property market inevitably craters in the face of rising seas. Five to 6 feet of sea level rise by 2100 is likely, and likely catastrophic: An inundation of this magnitude would physically displace some 800,000 residents of Miami-Dade County - nearly a third of the current population - and render a large portion of the city uninhabitable.īut the impacts of these intensifying climatic changes - which also include the growing threat of monster hurricanes - will not be felt equally. Some scientists say that another 6 inches of sea level rise could very well arrive by 2030, and infrastructure planners are bracing for 2 feet by 2060. The ocean reclaims chunks of land in the fall and spring during so called “sunny day” floods, which have become four times more common today than 15 years ago. The sea at the southern end of the Florida Peninsula has risen a foot since the 1900s, and almost 5 inches since 1993. But as sea levels steadily rise, the porous limestone rock its residents walk on every day means there is no stopping the Atlantic Ocean. An array of powers - municipal, state, federal, and private - have begun to plan and borrow and spend to defend Miami and its environs.
There is an inescapable truth about life in South Florida: This low-lying region is set to be swallowed by the sea.