“Imagine six towers — two condos and four hotels — all standing above you,” he said as they passed the site where Kuala Lumpur-based Genting Bhd. (GENT) hopes to build the world’s largest casino. “If you look to your left, this is where the cannibal incident happened two years ago. This is where the gentleman ate the homeless guy’s face.”
As the luxury bus ferried a dozen of his clients past building sites, Miami property consultant Peter Zalewski rattled off names of 50 area high-rises being financed by money from Venezuela, Hong Kong and Argentina.
Blocks away, locals live on as little as $11 a day.
It’s another boom in Miami, which has been at the mercy of real-estate speculators since the 1920s. The latest influx of capital is deepening inequality in a city where the distribution of wealth more closely resembles a developing country than the most advanced industrialized nation.
“Miami isn’t the gateway to Latin America; Miami has the same economic demographics as Latin America,” said Pedro “Joe” Greer, a doctor whose 25 years of work treating the homeless and uninsured there earned him the nation’s highest civilian honor — the Presidential Medal of Freedom — in 2009. “Seventy percent of the families we work with bring in less than $25,000 a year.”
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