hi n dry

Do you think some of the points in the article below could also apply here?

There's Trouble--Lots Of It--in Paradise
.......
By TIM PADGETT
Posted Sunday, Nov. 19, 2006

......... jagged growth spurt is showing signs of sputtering, .... traffic jams, half-built high rises, struggling schools. And more than ever, they are voting with their flip-flops. They're leaving town.

... Although the 2006 hurricane season, ending in a few weeks, has been merciful, insurers have been less so. Premiums have been going up as much as 1,000% since 2000 for some home- and business owners.....

..."Planning is disdained as the enemy...." One problem is weak government oversight of development....

....some 1,600 randomly selected residents to list what they thought...was the No. 1 value? Corruption...."

.......It probably doesn't help the morale of working-class residents that Miami has a way of shaking its wealthy side in your face....

"This is a greedy city,"....

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...1128-2,00.html

see complete article below:

There's Trouble--Lots Of It--in Paradise

Restless locals call Miami a corrupt, exorbitant mess, and many are leaving

By TIM PADGETT
Posted Sunday, Nov. 19, 2006
Jewelry, an actress once said, takes people's minds off your wrinkles. So too has Miami's necklace of pearl beaches and aventurine waters long distracted residents from the city's notorious imperfections. Crime and corruption were a small price to pay, people told themselves, for an otherwise affordable existence so near paradise.

That logic may no longer apply. Crime is down, but the city's old dysfunctions have been joined by acute new economic pressures on Miami's middle class and retirees. Now that the city's jagged growth spurt is showing signs of sputtering, regular Miamians are taking stock of their new city: traffic jams, half-built high rises, struggling schools. And more than ever, they are voting with their flip-flops. They're leaving town.

When Brenda Powell, 61, retires next year, she plans to leave Miami, where she has lived for 30 years, and perhaps head for North Carolina. A retiree moving away from Florida might seem as odd as an Everglades egret flying north for the winter, but Powell, an administrative assistant, says she has had enough. "Miami has become an overcrowded mess," she says. "It takes me an hour to drive less than 10 miles." Joseph and Teresa Burke and their four children are also moving to North Carolina.

Although the 2006 hurricane season, ending in a few weeks, has been merciful, insurers have been less so. Premiums have been going up as much as 1,000% since 2000 for some home- and business owners. The Burkes watched hurricane and other insurance costs on their Miami Beach house skyrocket from $3,500 a year in 2000 to $17,000 today.

"I'm leaving everything I've known my entire life," says Joseph, 43, who runs a small ocean-freighter business. "But if the rest of the country was based on the same out-of-whack economic-fluid levels Miami's on these days, America would be a Third World banana republic."

Census Bureau data show that in each year since 2000, on average over 20,000 more residents have left Miami (which includes the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County, pop. 2.4 million) than have moved there from other parts of the U.S.

Immigrants from other countries, especially Latin America, are the only reason Miami's population is still growing. Ironically, as more Latin Americans migrate to Miami, couples like Fred and Linda Adam may be switching places with them.

The Adams just sold their home near Miami Beach, and are moving to more affordable Honduras. "We could hold on to our house," says Fred, 57. But Miami's spiraling cost of living means "we couldn't afford the other things we like to do here," such as scuba diving. "We'd be twiddling our thumbs."

Today Miami is the least affordable metropolitan area in the U.S. It has one of the highest median house prices ($372,000) and the nation's wealthiest community (Fisher Island, where luminaries like Oprah Winfrey have had homes). But a heavy reliance on the tourism industry and its attendant low-wage service jobs has given Miami one of America's lowest household median incomes ($33,000) and the country's highest proportion of renters and homeowners who spend 30% or more of their pay on housing.

It probably doesn't help the morale of working-class residents that Miami has a way of shaking its wealthy side in your face. On many mornings, rush-hour drivers on packed causeway bridges between Miami and Miami Beach have to idle their engines a bit longer as the drawbridges raise for yachters on their breakfast cruises from nearby celebrity islets.

The competition to stay afloat hasn't improved ethnic tensions, either. For all the vibrant, cross-hemispheric diversity in Miami, its Latino, black and white enclaves remain segregated and mistrustful of one another. The Cuban exiles' dominion over much of Miami politics (remember the Elián González uprising?) has bred resentment in some quarters.

This showed in the outcry earlier this year when the Miami-Dade school board, whose system has a dismal 45% graduation rate, announced that it would spend tens of thousands of dollars in court to ban a kindergarten book about Cuba that it says isn't tough enough on Fidel Castro.

Even though the city of Miami has the third worst poverty rate in the nation, there have been few credible attempts to help the lowest earners find housing. One problem is weak government oversight of development--a sign, some complain, that Miami's sun-soaked complacency has addled its political leaders as well.

"Planning is disdained as the enemy here," says Gihan Perera, director of the Miami Workers Center. Local anger boiled over recently at a housing scandal that Perera's group helped the Miami Herald expose: Miami-Dade's government housing agency paid millions of dollars to politically connected developers for low-income projects that were never built or were used to construct private condominiums instead. "This is a greedy city," says Yvonne Stratford, 52, an unemployed seafood-warehouse worker who had hoped to live in one of the new low-income units.

Imagine Miami, a private community-development project, recently asked some 1,600 randomly selected residents to list what they thought were the top "Miami values." What was the No. 1 value? Corruption. "[Miamians] don't trust their leaders or each other," says the group's founder Daniella Levine.

When it comes to that problem, and to many others, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez says he knows where to start. "The structure of government here often doesn't work," he told TIME. "[Miami] gets ruled in the end by an unwieldy, unaccountable bureaucracy."

Alvarez argues that the citizens of Miami are ready to help take their city back. He points to a recent $3 billion bond issue that voters approved for massive infrastructure improvements, a half-penny tax to build up their virtually nonexistent public-transit system, and a new $400 million downtown performing-arts center.

And a majority of Miamians support Alvarez's efforts to reduce the inordinate powers of their county commission--which include housing-agency oversight--especially since its members have long run Miami-Dade like a collection of venal fiefdoms. A judge has ordered the commission to schedule a referendum on the issue. But in the meantime, Miamians are likely to see more of their neighbors winging north.

To view a photo essay on the state of Miami today, go to time.com/miami
With reporting by With reporting by Kathie Klarreich/Miami

kurt

People have been leaving Miami at a rapid pace since the early 80's, but even more have moved there. Many moved to the counties along the coast north of Dade County.

30A Skunkape

Have Walton, Bay, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Escambia et al had population increase or decrease?

__________________

Bobby J

1980:
1990:
2005:
2015(p):
2030(p):
(p) Denotes Projected Population






1980:
1990:
2005:
2015(p):
2030(p):
(p) Denotes Projected Population






1980:
1990:
2005:
2015(p):
2030(p):
(p) Denotes Projected Population






1980:
1990:
2005:
2015(p):
2030(p):
(p) Denotes Projected Population






1980:
1990:
2005:
2015(p):
2030(p):
(p) Denotes Projected Population



It looks like all increased. Every coastal area I go to seems to be growing. All the way to Costa Rica. Even Panama is exploding. Crowding does not seem to be only a South walton problem. I just back from southern California. That was crazy. It took me two hours to get to the airport 30 miles away!

30A Skunkape

Thanks Bobby J!

__________________

Bob

Inland areas of Florida are growing very fast. Areas east of Tampa/ west of Orlando.....US 441/ US 27 corridors.....Gainesville, Ocala, Leesburg...even Lake City. Chiefland is a real sleeper area. Small cities to the east of Ocala, Palatka, Crecent City south to Deland. The last segment of Florida that seems affordable is inland. When The Villages is done in a few years it will have over 100,000 residents.....amazing.

aquaticbiology

its also due to birth rate - exponential - unless the black plague comes along or something we fill up an area cause old folks dont die anymore - they move to florida!

hi n dry

What concerns me is not that the population of Florida is decreasng-which it obviously is not- but that the projected movement into Florida will be considerably less than expected.

This means that an excessive number of condos and neighborhood developments were built with the misguided assumption that “if you build it they will come”.

Well the problem maybe that the baby boomers are not going to come in the numbers anticipated. There are many reasons for this which are beyond the scope of this post.

As a result we have a significant disparity between expectation and reality. The consequence is a glut of real estate inventory and a collapse of real estate prices.

The free fall of real estate in our area is shocking to many developers, real estate companies, and investors. Many have yet to grasp the seriousness.

SHELLY

It's only a shock to those who believed everything they read (or published) in glossy sales brochures or heard from the shills at the pre-construction sales sideshows.

The few bucks that developers and investulators lose as a result of chasing the market is nothing compared to the real damage done. The real problem will come later down the road when the mirrors shatter and the smoke clears and Florida realizes how the RE frenzy destroyed its natural environment and its middle/lower income economy.

__________________
But hey...Top Ramen tastes a whole lot better when you eat it off of a Granite Countertop. (Mr & Mrs Too Much Homebuyer)

Florida State Flower

beachmouse

Apparently school enrollment across the state is significantly lower than what anyone expected it would be for 2006-07. (ie. flat instead of usual growth numbers) Whether it's a one time blurp or a trend remains to be seen.

SHELLY

The taxpayer-funded bean counters who make up school budgets apparently fail to realize that empty, over-priced, overbuilt subdivisions and investulator pre-construction/conversion condos don't house school-aged children.

__________________
But hey...Top Ramen tastes a whole lot better when you eat it off of a Granite Countertop. (Mr & Mrs Too Much Homebuyer)

Florida State Flower

SHELLY

Is he 4 years too early in his prediction again??

(…) Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? (…)
(Alan Greenspan, "The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society", December 5, 1996)
.

__________________
But hey...Top Ramen tastes a whole lot better when you eat it off of a Granite Countertop. (Mr & Mrs Too Much Homebuyer)

Florida State Flower

Babyblue

I hate Greenspan.

nmosley

Well, I just feel the need to share my happy thoughts! Maybe, just maybe, the fact that SoWal is so beautiful and relatively free of crime and corruption (I know I am being an optimist here) will bring some of those Miami folks with $$$ headed to the Panhandle instead of them buying property farther north. Who knows, this could be a good thing for other more attractive areas of Florida. Perhaps an "inter-state" juggling of population will redistribute the Floridians who are fed up with the areas they currently live in and they will fall in love and buy up all the excessive Panhandle inventory. Shelly, how have you been? I will be wiating for the shoe of reality to drop on me for this one. Please be merciful! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you by the way...

SHELLY

In many cases the $$$$'ed Miami folks and crime & corruption go hand-in-hand. The other $$$$'ed Miami folks are world-class Kvetchers who will crush any shred of optimism like a bug (book a cruise out of Miami during the week of Hanukkah sometime )

__________________
But hey...Top Ramen tastes a whole lot better when you eat it off of a Granite Countertop. (Mr & Mrs Too Much Homebuyer)

Florida State Flower

SHELLY

In keeping with the "investor" theme on the thread....Check out Episode 1 of "Flipper Nation" HERE.





.

__________________
But hey...Top Ramen tastes a whole lot better when you eat it off of a Granite Countertop. (Mr & Mrs Too Much Homebuyer)

Florida State Flower

goofer44

Shelly

It is obvious why they failed. No granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances !! They were just rookies.

Bob

Yes, that means it's great to be a religious/private school owner with Jeb at the helm. It has nothing to do with population influx.

SHELLY

Yeah, NCP just isn't enough...I suspect they'll catch on in the upcoming episodes. Next will be the GCT; then they'll try throwing in a "free" Suzuki Swift; followed by, "We'll pay your closing costs;" and culminate with bringing a check to closing as they merrily follow the market down. (Gotta love the Mortgage Broker character with the Bluetooth stuck in his ear! )

__________________
But hey...Top Ramen tastes a whole lot better when you eat it off of a Granite Countertop. (Mr & Mrs Too Much Homebuyer)

Florida State Flower

pmd8

I grew up in the Panhandle and visit several times a year. I've lived in Miami for 17 years.

The corruption, lack of planning and constant kow-towing to developers is only marginally worse in Miami. You just have 10 times the number of people.

As pointed out in one of the articles, areas that rely on tourism often have low per capital income levels. When people say growth brings jobs, they are primarily low paying ones.

I must say the drivers are far more courteous here although not terribly gifted.

mf

penn & teller are doing a documentary for showtime about how "florida sucks".

i quite like their series called bu***s**t, but am reticent to call this a true documentary, as it appears they already have an agenda.

i'm not sure how florida's any worse than nevada where they live, but i guess it's got to do with how we vote.

Cil

Yeah, there is an agenda. Here is their website; it was advertised in Craigslist:

Florida Sucks

Everything that has been happening in Florida is also happening in Colorado. However, in Florida it is at a far more accelerated speed.

Bobby J

This whole Florida sucking thing could be a good thing...

__________________
www.lifeonshore.com
www.beachpropertiesofflorida.com
www.bobbyjblog.com