CUTLER BAY, Fla. – Some residents in Cutler Bay are trying to stop a new neighbor from moving in.
The Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust is planning to convert the La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel at 10821 Caribbean Blvd., just north of the Southland Mall, into affordable housing for people who were once homeless.
The county purchased the hotel earlier this year as part of a plan to turn it into a complex called “Hideaways by the Bay.”
The plan prompted resident Elizabeth Soto to create a Facebook group called ”Cutler Bay Residents Not in Favor of The Homeless Trust Initiative.”
She said it was because she felt blindsided by the deal.
“I thought it was odd we never heard about it,” Soto said. “This was rolled out without getting input from our local government, for residents when this is a taxpayer-funded initiative.”
She also questions whether it could be at odds with the town’s plan to redevelop the Southland Mall site.
Hotel site:
“The question here is whether that is the correct location granted the town’s plans,” Soto said.
Ron Book, who chairs the Homeless Trust, pushed back against what he said are misconceptions about the project.
“This is not a shelter. It is not a needle exchange,” he said. “This is housing for formerly homeless individuals. These are not people off the streets. These are people transitioning out of shelter into permanent supportive housing.”
The plan, Book said, is to provide affordable housing, mostly to seniors.
“Every individual who lives there will have a lease,” he said. “Every individual who lives there will, like any tenant, abide by the rules and the regulations. We will have security there, services there and it will be a far better use of the property than it is currently being utilized.”
Cutler Bay Mayor Tim Meerbott is also questioning the plan.
“The real question is whether it is the best use for this area,” he told Local 10 News. “We have a housing shortage in Cutler Bay.”
Noting that “supply needs to be increased considerably,” he said the shortage leads him to wonder whether the parcel is better served by an even more robust development, providing more units of affordable and workforce housing, rather than converting an existing hotel.
“The blue-collar workers who live in this area, we need additional housing,” Meerbott said. “We can’t keep shoving people into housing together, looking for efficiencies here, efficiencies there.”
In the meantime, Miami-Dade commissioners, during a Chairman’s Policy Council and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee meeting Monday, passed a resolution sponsored by District 8 Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins, who represents the area, pertaining to the site.
It directs the county to identify alternative locations “for the acquisition, construction, redevelopment, and/or rehabilitation of real property for homeless housing” and to prepare a written report within 60 days.
Cohen Higgins said the county needs to “do a deep dive and conduct due diligence to explore other options within District 8.”
Chairman Oliver G. Gilbert, III, Commissioner Marleine Bastien and Vice-Chairman Anthony Rodriguez voted in favor of the legislation. Two other commissioners, Raquel Regalado and Keon Hardemon, voted against it.
“We are both working for the greater good,” Meerbott, who also spoke at the meeting, said. “It is just which one is going to have the greatest impact in the South Florida community.”
Cutler Bay’s town council plans to hold a workshop meeting allowing residents to about the plan on Nov. 29 at 6 p.m. at its town hall.