Miami Beach housing stipend looks like self-serving effort

It’s touching that Miami Beach’s elected officials think so highly of their own staff aides and care so much about them that the city is considering a $500-a-month supplement to each one to help them beat the city’s high housing costs.

Legislation moving ahead says it would offer that help because the aides “are critical members of the staff who provide invaluable support in the performance of city business, often working demanding schedules that require in-person commitments during unpredictable hours, late nights, weekends, and holidays,” Miami Today’s Janetssy Lugo reported last week.

Given the high cost of Miami Beach housing, it’s understandable that commissioners are so worried about their own teams. That concern is commendable.

On the flip side, however, is the fact that other workers in Miami Beach are also deserving. It seems self-serving for the city to take care of mayor’s and commissioners’ aides without providing for other workers in similar circumstances who are caught in the same cost-of-living squeeze.

On the city’s own payroll, police and firefighters must be on the job in person and work unpredictable hours, late nights, weekends and holidays. Shouldn’t they get in on the commission largesse?

Moreover, the vast majority of people who work in Miami Beach face the same pains that commission aides do battling heavy traffic with inadequate public transportation to get to work rapidly from the distant areas where they can better afford to live.

In Miami Beach more than most cities, the economy depends on the service workers who keep hotels and restaurants and stores and hospitals and condominiums operating. Many people would say that the job of those workers every day is even more vital than the people who provide support to elected officials. Where is their housing stipend?

How about teachers? They can’t work remotely and seldom can afford to live in Miami Beach. Where is their housing supplement? Aren’t they as valuable as the 12 commission aides who are about to be funded?

It’s obvious that Miami Beach can’t pay everyone who works in the city $500 a month as a housing supplement. What is not obvious, however, is why every single one of the chosen dozen works directly for the people who are voting to create and fund the stipends. It seems just like the old urban politics where elected officials took care of their own team first.

That might not have been in commissioners’ minds at all. It’s likely they really feel for their own workers and want to help them, which is an honorable concept.

But it doesn’t look that way to others.

Instead of paying housing subsidies, what if the commission worked harder to tackle the issues that are squeezing employees throughout the city, not just in city hall?

One of those is limited workforce housing. The city is working on that, but what if it added to the fight the funds that are now ticketed just to help mayor’s and commissioners’ aides?

The other major factor squeezing workers is the abysmal lack of rapid transit to the city. But that transit can be built if the city will just stop working to stall a planned Baylink rapid transit system from linking to the mainland, where most of the city’s workers live. 

Keeping fast transit out does as much harm to workers in Miami Beach as do high housing costs in the city. Workers don’t have to live in Miami Beach – they just have to get there quickly and conveniently. Expediting that transit won’t cost the city a penny. The whole construction bill will go to federal, state and county governments, and they’re all on board already.

If the city wants to also subsidize housing for some, fine – but not just for 12 aides. Open it to other workers in the city, based on a means test. Then, with limited money, have a lottery among that pool of eligible workers. Let the city’s aides enter too, but not as guaranteed winners.

If aides need higher pay because they’re hard to retain, be honest about it and raise city pay scales. This stipend is now just a city raise for 12 people gussied up to look like something else.

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