Your downtown noise violation update.

[V. Barbarino]

Nothing major to report however two interesting things.

1. First Biz announcing that Noc is keeping the volume on the patio at "60%" so they don't draw attention. So your patio experience will be at a lower volume and for old dudes like my self, that may be a good thing. But it speaks "volumes" where the patios are heading. If you keep it at 60% now just imagine when the condos are done. Probably have to keep it at 0% when the time comes.

2. So last week, I'm in Miami for meetings for my job and the Habitat for Humanity wants my company to do a build in over town. So the chick doing the talk, spoke about how they built 50 places in over town and even when they are done HH helps the neighbors with quality of life issues and then she said "and there is a night club keeping everyone awake that will be addressed soon", she was talking about Karu and Y.

BTW, I'm dead against HH, they give houses to poor people who don't deserve them, in fact Dade can tell a great story about why HH is crap. If you want me to build a house, sure I'll help, but I'm not building some poor persons house because they made bad choices in life and don't deserve it, now if it was a veteran or a deceased soldiers family something along those lines, then sign me up, but I'm not going to help Shawanda and her 15 kids to a free house. I know of way more deserving people. IMHO.

So it's HH verse Karu and Y and 10 Museum Park and Greg Mermelli vs Noc and Space.

[Guest Buck White]

It's funny you should mention that. The last time I was at Karu & Y I was absolutely astounded.......the soundwaves were just ricochetting off of those apartment buildings. As far as your feelings on indigence......you looking down on the poor would be the same as the rich looking down on you. :-\ Come on Barbarino....build one of those wooden houses for the poor...with the iron bars on the windows. :'(

[all4tribal1414779019]

Shaniqua & aytonnnnnn!

Gotta love these names - the best right now is Teepayyyy.

[Guest pod]

Is it me or are developers generally just a bunch of uptight pricks?

[Guest coach]

Karu is in an interesting situation. They built it there with the assumption that either the poor residents wouldn't have any political clout to complain or shut them down, or the more likely assumption that that area is about to be torn down and redeveloped because the poor residents do not have the political clout to save their homes. I'd guess the latter and I'd also guess that the Karu people know something we don't, and that's why they made that bet.

I *also* would not bet against the Overtown residents.

As far as Barbarino being a selfish bigot, that's an easy assumption to make.

[Guest endymion]

Recipients of homes from Habitat for Humanity have to pay for them. They aren't donated to poor people.

Habitat for Humanity was the ONLY organization that actually produced homes for Miami Dade's housing authority. The private contractors who also got funding from the housing authority to build affordable housing instead took the money and did not build houses. Refer to the Pulitzer Prize winning "House of Lies" series from the Miami Herald from last summer.

A gigantic deciding factor in all of this is the Marlin stadium, and whether or not it really gets built. That will have as much an effect on the area as the Carnival Center if it does happen. Karu & Y is in an area that will rapidly gentrify if the Marlins stadium is built to the west of Park West.

[Guest pod]

They get the homes super cheap though since the labor and sometimes the materials are donated.

[V. Barbarino]

They pay cost, which in basically free and they have to some other bs as well, but they are not deserving in my opinion.

Dade needs to post his story about HH and you'll see why we shouldn't reward people who are not deserving.

[Guest endymion]

I have volunteered for Habitat and I almost went to the Gulf Coast to build for them after Katrina becuase as a firefighter I have disaster area experience. Yes I'd like to see a night club manager try to talk me out of helping to build homes for Habitat for Humanity. Great PR for the nightlife industry. Fire away, Dade. This should be interesting.

[Guest pod]

HH is not a bad program, what some are suggesting here is that it has been abused in the past. 99 percent of the people receiving HH homes are deserving of it, it's the 1 percent who give it a bad rap.

[Guest coach]

Good point, Pod. Haliburtan abused the military-industrial complex. I think we should get rid of all military contractors, starting with Haliburton. Same logic that Barbarino is using. A few bad apples do not a bad business make.

[V. Barbarino]

I'd say 1% of them are deserving. Why do we reward the poor? I'm not poor because I busted my ass and spent my own money going to college. Community college is 200 bucks a semester, then transfer to a state school and you walk out with a degree for under 15-20k, with a 2% federal loan. Study after study shows poor people are poor because of bad decision making, very few of them are poor due to circumstances beyond their control. The vast majority of the homeless are mentally sick, I think HH should spend their time and money helping those people instead. imho.

[Guest frankthetank]

That may be true for the adults but the poor children have no control over the situation.

[V. Barbarino]

That may be true for the adults but the poor children have no control over the situation.

I agree, however does buying their parents a free house solve this issue? The answer is no, so I say we shouldn't reward the parents but I agree the kids are innocent in all of this, so I really don't have an answer.

[Guest musicalmissionary]

Good to see Barby stepping up his bigotry... taking shots at HH like that is just plain ignorant... especially based on secondhand info.

I started an HH volunteer group in Dallas and in one summer we built 5 houses in 3 different areas. On each project... the single mother and her kids (if they were old enough) were on site every weekend putting in 8+ hour days sweating along with us to build their house. I got to know each family and listened to their story and each one of them was very deserving of the assistance they were receiving... and appreciative as well.

Granted, my experience does not necessarily represent HH in every single one of it's operations around the country. But neither does your secondhand tale. The point is that these types of organizations vary largely based on who's in charge. However, I'm willing to bet that the good examples outweigh the bad.

[V. Barbarino]

Good to see Barby stepping up his bigotry... taking shots at HH like that is just plain ignorant... especially based on secondhand info.

I started an HH volunteer group in Dallas and in one summer we built 5 houses in 3 different areas. On each project... the single mother and her kids (if they were old enough) were on site every weekend putting in 8+ hour days sweating along with us to build their house. I got to know each family and listened to their story and each one of them was very deserving of the assistance they were receiving... and appreciative as well.

Granted, my experience does not necessarily represent HH in every single one of it's operations around the country. But neither does your secondhand tale. The point is that these types of organizations vary largely based on who's in charge. However, I'm willing to bet that the good examples outweigh the bad.

my gf is a single mother and a Navy veteran, should she get a free house??????

Wow, they put in 8 hours a day for a free house, wow! Now that you mention it, after doing that kind of crazy work schedule they do deserve a free house..

If you think for one second giving houses to people in over town will change that city, then you are nuts.

[Guest musicalmissionary]

Do you have a fuckin clue how HH works... or are you just spewing shit for shit's sake? You make it sound like HH grabs people off the streets and shoves them into a free house. Far from it...

There is an application process that is over a year long which involves a very detailed review of their employment history and overall background. At least in my cases... these people were employed and paying a significant amount of their income towards the house.

But keep running your mouth about shit you don't understand... I'm curious what kinda bullshit will come out next...

[Guest endymion]

Study after study shows poor people are poor because of bad decision making, very few of them are poor due to circumstances beyond their control.

Poor people who live Overtown are the perfect counter-example. They are people who have had circumstance against them for generations. A bit of history:

Overtown was originally called "Colored Town". Fugitive black slaves who fled south on the undergrond railroad as well as free men who labored on Flagler's railroad lived in Miami around the turn of the century but they were prohibited from living in desirable areas. Black people were required by law to live on the west side of the tracks. This isn't ancient history, this was only five generations ago.

A generation later, the pioneers of Miami Beach used black laborers from Colored Town to build new land for sale to white people. The Lummus brothers refused to sell land to black people, even though it was black people who actually created the land itself. (reference: Braham D. Lavender, Miami Beach in 1920 pg. 13, 2002)

Then in the 1960s when Miami leaders were selecting a location for the I-95 / I -395 interchange, the obvious location was Overtown. The neighborhood was uprooted and its character disintegrated. This was only two generations ago, forty years. Now, today, the performing arts center, gentrification of the design district, and possibly the Marlins stadium are just nail after nail in the Overtown coffin.

Barbarino, what problems did YOUR family go through that compare?

[Guest pod]

That's generally agreed, that I-95 and I-395 destroyed Overtown.

[V. Barbarino]

Study after study shows poor people are poor because of bad decision making, very few of them are poor due to circumstances beyond their control.

Poor people who live Overtown are the perfect counter-example. They are people who have had circumstance against them for generations. A bit of history:

Overtown was originally called "Colored Town". Fugitive black slaves who fled south on the undergrond railroad as well as free men who labored on Flagler's railroad lived in Miami around the turn of the century but they were prohibited from living in desirable areas. Black people were required by law to live on the west side of the tracks. This isn't ancient history, this was only five generations ago.

A generation later, the pioneers of Miami Beach used black laborers from Colored Town to build new land for sale to white people. The Lummus brothers refused to sell land to black people, even though it was black people who actually created the land itself. (reference: Braham D. Lavender, Miami Beach in 1920 pg. 13, 2002)

Then in the 1960s when Miami leaders were selecting a location for the I-95 / I -395 interchange, the obvious location was Overtown. The neighborhood was uprooted and its character disintegrated. This was only two generations ago, forty years. Now, today, the performing arts center, gentrification of the design district, and possibly the Marlins stadium are just nail after nail in the Overtown coffin.

Barbarino, what problems did YOUR family go through that compare?

Came here with nothing, fled Italy during the war, and were discriminated against. Worked hard, got an education, learned English and made a good life for ourselves. My parents grew up in the projects as kids, yes there are far more poor whites than other minorities combined!

Did you see 60 mintues 2 weeks ago? People in poor neighborhoods won't call the police to report crimes, it's called snitching. So how is some fucking interchange the fault of a city that is wrought with crime to blame when it's citizens won't report crimes because rappers said so????????????

[Guest endymion]

Barbarino, what problems did YOUR family go through that compare?

Came here with nothing, fled Italy during the war, and were discriminated against. Worked hard, got an education, learned English and made a good life for ourselves. My parents grew up in the projects as kids, yes there are far more poor whites than other minorities combined!

Now that you've gone from deriding the poor to deriding black culture as well, you sound more like a racist than a proponent of an "ownership society".

So your family has had three generations of encouragement to prosper. A family that lived in Overtown when your grandparents got to America was already discriminated against for generations, and then as your parents were working their way out of poverty in the 60's, Overtown was destroyed and those families had to restart from scratch all over again and find new homes.

Regardless, if it really does come down to choosing between night clubs or affordable housing from Habitat for Humanity in Overtown, then affordable housing deserves to win. A show-down between upscale Karu & Y and affordable housing would be very bad press for the entire nightlife industry. If the Community Redevelopment Agency starts to see night clubs as antagonistic to the neighborhood then Space and Nocturnal are goners. Good work, Club Legend.

[Guest coach]

Study after study shows poor people are poor because of bad decision making, very few of them are poor due to circumstances beyond their control.

Way more studies show this is not true. Of course, even given that bad decision making might be one of the causes, where do they learn good decision making?

[Guest coach]

That may be true for the adults but the poor children have no control over the situation.

I agree, however does buying their parents a free house solve this issue? The answer is no, so I say we shouldn't reward the parents but I agree the kids are innocent in all of this, so I really don't have an answer.

The answer is actually yes.

[Guest endymion]

That may be true for the adults but the poor children have no control over the situation.

I agree, however does buying their parents a free house solve this issue?

The answer is actually yes.

Second that. The answer to that question is a big "YES".

Barbarino needs to spend a day volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. His whole outlook on life in general would shift.

[Guest pod]

HH in general, or HH in Miami? You know social programs are run a little "differently" around here.