Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/

by ollieglass • 7 years ago

211 140 7 years ago

stuart78• 7 years ago

This article would be so much better if the author did not keep pausing to editorialize and interpret the opinions and perspective of her subjects. Trust the reader to draw their own conclusions. This style of writing insults our intelligence. All the worse because the approach and topic are quite good.

nugget• 7 years ago

I read the article as half editorial and half Tom Wolfe -esque fictional narrative - and while I know that may not have been the author’s intention, I quite enjoyed it as such.

taurath2• 7 years ago

I appreciated the imagery myself - it kept the topic going with the drumbeat of “they are flat out wrong”

brendanmc6• 7 years ago

This is one of the few things that annoys me about HN, this exact comment is almost always here if the article makes any attempt at creative writing or storytelling. Insulting? Give me a break.

Writing is an art not a science. Good writing should convey emotion. That's not an easy thing to do. That's why I loved this piece. It captured many of my own feelings, feelings I hadn't found a way to communicate even though I've been involved in sustainability for some years now. I associated the characters with people I know in my personal life, I related to the author, and I learned a few things too.

This paragraph is probably my favorite:

"We work, and at the end of the day, if we think at all, all we have time to think about is that we are cowards, or, before the thought comes, to escape it. Raise your hand if you have never hoped you will die before you have to thoroughly disrupt your own life for the lives of those who will live after you are dead. I do not mean to yell at anyone. Every day, I ask myself, what are you willing to do? And sometimes I feel righteous and strong, but mostly what I feel is fear, and a drive towards self preservation. I can laugh at the prettily arranged soap, or the privately-viewed sunsets, or the Jet Skis, because those are not my drugs..."

synctext• 7 years ago

Great article on the disconnectedness and short-term-ism:

She said the main thing is just that Miami was being very forward thinking. She mentioned Amsterdam, and how they were making it work, and how the Dutch were just the poster child for how this worked, and that they were sorting out a way to make this work. “I think the takeaway is just that Miami is doing something about it.”

Guess this will take a few floodings, billions dollars write-offs, and giant cultural shift to sink in. We Dutch people have "dry feet tax". Some of the organisations that collects those taxes have been founded in the 13th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands)

barry-cotter2• 7 years ago

As far as I know Florida is basically all limestone, which is porous, so dams don’t work. The water will seep through the bedrock so you can’t do the same thing in the Netherlands in Miami.

danmaz742• 7 years ago

Yes, the article mentions this problem.

EliRivers• 7 years ago

Although Miami can do what synctext mentioned, just like in the Netherlands; raise money, appoint responsible bodies and do something about it.

taurath2• 7 years ago

And you can bet the coverage and bailout money will both be a lot larger than Puerto Rico despite a 15 year warning period.

philjohn• 7 years ago

The Dam the Delta project was very impressive, and having seen it up close doubly so.

Am I right in thinking that some areas have now been designated as "we'll flood those to protect other areas, because the cost of compensation is less than the cost of adding ever more complex defences"? I recall hearing that somewhere.

AJ007• 7 years ago

I would question how many of the buildings and infrastructure in South Florida will still be usable/habitable 50 years from now, even without a sea level rise.

In California both the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles have a significant amount of near term risk in terms of water and seismic risk. The absolute worst case scenarios probably make Miami in 2069 look mild.

During the cold war, the assumption was that any major US or European city could become un-inhabitable in moments and most of the humans would be dead. That provided a pretty strong incentive not to build in a dense urban areas, but it was balanced out with the sense of total annihilation for everyone. Some still chose to put their money in to fallout shelters than "prime" Manhattan real estate.

I don't know much about cities and populations outside of the US. I suspect a lot of them are at risk. In Iraq, if the Mosul dam failed, most of the major cities would be wiped out. This is probably true in many other places with questionable hydrology infrastructure.

It would be interesting to build risk models of geographical areas that are at risk of instant destruction (dam failure, earthquakes, nuclear power plant failures, nuclear weapons) and longer term risks. What parts of the world will humans live in 500 years?

Also I'd like to hear from people who are living in the Millennium Tower in San Francisco.

hyperbovine• 7 years ago

The repeated self-comparisons with the Dutch, were, as the Dutch themselves apparently used to say, droll. I did a bike trip along the northern coast of the Netherlands recently. If you want to appreciate the level of concerted, society-wide effort needed to address flooding and storm surge, look no further than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterscheldekering. (Which is itself part of the even larger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works.)

I had no idea whatsoever that this thing existed or what it was for until it simply hove into view one day while biking from town to town. It is a truly spectacular sight and worthy of the title of "8th Engineering Wonder of the World".

Compare the $billions and $billions and centuries, literally centuries, that the Dutch have invested in tackling this problem with, as the TFA puts it, some pumps the size of a large airedale. It drives home the point of how utterly fucked Miami, and the rest of the coastal world that is not the Netherlands, really is.

temdbej• 7 years ago

I just went to Miami for the first time. I loved Miami Beach. Also surprised by how relatively inexpensive real estate was.

itomato• 7 years ago

It's the hurricane and flood insurance that are insane

vonmoltke• 7 years ago

Also surprised by how relatively inexpensive real estate was.

Compared to what? South Florida real estate is pretty expensive, compared to the rest of the US.

bilbo0s4• 7 years ago

Maybe this guy is from San Fran or Manhattan. In which case, yeah, 2 or 3 thousand square feet on South Beach seem "cheap".

But compared to most of the US, South Beach is pretty expensive.

opportune2• 7 years ago

Most of Miami outside of the immediate vicinity of downtown Miami and Miami beach is pretty affordable as far as coastal cities go, especially compared to ones with Miami-caliber weather.

Not sure what the climate change situations are, but there are condos in an amazing location (Brickell Key) which go for like $300-400k for a 2bed.

fencepost3• 7 years ago

Also surprised by how relatively inexpensive real estate was.

It's not just the price, it's whether you can get financing for it. As noted elsewhere, there are areas where a 30 year mortgage is simply not an option.

mnm1• 7 years ago

I wish she had talked to some loan officers at local banks. I bet she'd get a different picture to contrast with that of the realtors. Of course realtors are going to pretend like they don't care even if they do (although they probably don't). Once the sale goes through, they don't care if the house is swept away the next day. Banks on the other hand are in this for the next thirty years. From what I understand, some are hesitant or even refuse to offer thirty year mortgages in Miami. That's a story if it is indeed true.

danmaz742• 7 years ago

That would make for a great follow-up article.

zrobotics• 7 years ago

Yep, this is just such a poor article. Would it be shocking if I talked to a car sales person, pretended I wanted an inefficient (but high-margin) large pickup truck and the sales person downplayed all the negatives of the vehicle?

Such a shame that the author was so focused on mocking other people and preaching to the choir, since this is an extremely interesting topic that deserves a much better article.

nabla95• 7 years ago

What happens 50 years from now should matter relatively little for people living there now. Property owners and banks start discounting the resale value of the land and large property investments, but it's gradual process.

After discounting property values, Miami will be cheaper place to live in the future and that means that it may attract even more people.

acdha5• 7 years ago

What happens 50 years from now should matter relatively little for people living there now. Property owners and banks start discounting the resale value of the land and large property investments, but it's gradual process.

You’re missing a lot of the details explained in the article: this isn’t something like a predictable 2% tax but something which fails significantly at unknown intervals when a bad storm hits, or when infrastructure is overwhelmed and goes from functional to unusable all at once. That leads to highly correlated failures on a large scale: everyone in your zip code can’t get insurance, the entire city needs key infrastructure replaced at the same time, etc. and those also affect the desirability of the area and its ability to attract businesses, tourism, etc. That’s a recipe for volatility and in many cases the potential savings on property values are going to be significantly canceled by higher taxes to pay for all of that infrastructure and increased maintenance costs.

nabla95• 7 years ago

I don't see how not enumerating details that reduce property values (like repair and maintenance cost and cost of insurance) changes anything I said.

Investing includes risk management. You can discount the abrupt disruptions into the price. Everything you say reduces the value of the property. Eventually large areas will be abandoned but until that happens people can live there.

Amygaz• 7 years ago

Except that it will cost a lot more to build, insure and maintain.

That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if people with too much money start buying just to have bragging rights on a magnificent view of the sea level rise.

nabla95• 7 years ago

Except that it will cost a lot more to build, insure and maintain.

Those are not counterarguments. Increasing running costs directly decrease property values. The property value vs. replacement property value will adjust.

Consider normal case whre property price is $1M, upkeep an maintenance etc. cost is $10k per year and investor gets $70k in rent.

Now change it to property price being $100k, yearly cost $30k per year and investor gets $60k in rent.

Witch one has better ROI?

stevekemp2• 7 years ago

Like all the people flooding to live in Baltimore, now property is so cheap?

Sadly the idea that price alone affects desirability is a little niave.

doe88• 7 years ago

Related, a very good episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast on the subject of climate and real-estate in Florida.

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/...

sytelus• 7 years ago

Is it possible that people just keep filling the sea to keep the land? Sure rebuilding will be needed, but tearing apart 50 year old buildings shouldn't be too controversial. It looks like they already raising the roads and installing pumping stations. If this happens than it would take much more than 6 feet of sea level rise to fear from climate change.

euroclydon• 7 years ago

Does the author know the difference between east and west? Seems a pretty important fact that she mangled in an attempt to disparage the real estate agent, but she’s the one who gets it wrong.

acdha5• 7 years ago

Do you have a specific example?

thoman23• 7 years ago

There are no instances where she got it wrong. She mentions being west of Miami Beach and east of Miami, both of which are correct.

cs702• 7 years ago

As often seems to be the case in many parts of the US, the city of Miami is unlikely to muster the political will to do anything about this existential threat until after the city's businesses and residents have suffered serious, irreversible consequences. Think permanent loss. Few things can create as much political will as an irreversible crisis.

By then, of course, it will likely be too late for prevention, so the solution will have to be technological. Engineers of all kinds will have to come to the rescue of Miami and many other low-lying/coastal cities in the US.

kibwen2• 7 years ago

Honest question: has anyone, engineer or otherwise, yet come to the rescue of New Orleans in the fourteen years since Katrina? The flooding there, and our response to it, is so far our best benchmark of what we can expect as sea levels keep rising.

xnyan• 7 years ago

I can't see any way out of this besides massive population shifts over the next 50-100 years.

ethbro4• 7 years ago

$14B in new Army Corp of Engineers work, in and around New Orleans?

Doing work isn't sexy, and it doesn't make national news media, but it's what gets shit done.

And the Army Corp of Engineers has its management problems, but it also tends to be caught between "We don't believe anything will happen, so we're not giving you enough funding / control, but are giving you an unfunded mandate" and "Something happened! How did you let this happen after we trusted you to fix it?!"

In reality, they do a lot of good work.

mistrial9• 7 years ago

from a long distance away, and a few news articles, it appears that the politicians in Venice actually do generate quite a bit of money, and plans, and proceed to hoard it and play favorites and invite others to try to get it from them (wink wink) .. meanwhile, storm days in Venice can get rather exciting, in a negative way.. so that leads to more money, again.

sdca• 7 years ago

California real estate agents minimize erosion, earthquakes, fires, zombies and so on...

mcculley9• 7 years ago

I live in Orlando. I have lived in Florida for all of my life (47 years) and I also wonder how we are going to adapt. I don't see any long term planning.

A few years ago I was looking for a new office building. Considering the parking situations, I asked each developer what they were planning for electric cars, Ubers, and autonomous cars. None of them had a plan. They all said such changes were 20 years or more away. I was surprised at this because I predict it taking much less than 20 years for these changes to have a big impact.

I moved into a newly built high-rise apartment building in downtown Orlando 15 months ago. The building is less than two years old. There are not enough charging outlets in the garage to accommodate all of the electric cars. It will be an expensive refit to upgrade the garage.

I don't know how it works elsewhere, but the entire real estate industry in Florida is not capable of long term thinking.

yostrovs• 7 years ago

It's not expensive to install electric chargers in existing building. "Planning" for Uber involves what? Having a drive in in front of the building? How do you plan for non-existent self driving cars? Any practical advice you can share with the architects here?

mcculley9• 7 years ago

It is certainly more expensive to install electric chargers into an existing inert concrete structure than it is to design them in from the beginning. The building I am in is working this out right now, as are many others.

Planning for Uber and autonomous cars includes architecting porticos and pickup/dropoff points in favor of garages. Many buildings are hostile to use of Uber in my daily experience.

sbierwagen• 7 years ago

You can't install more than a handful of chargers without needing to run new circuits back to the main panel. Installing a hundred (not unreasonable for future needs!) would probably double the power consumption of the entire building, and require upgrading the utility connection, maybe even running new lines to the closest substation.

JustSomeNobody• 7 years ago

"Planning" for Uber involves what?

In Central Florida, this means having a safe place for people to stand and wait. That area gets frequent and often nasty thunderstorms.

maxsilver• 7 years ago

Any practical advice you can share with the architects here?

Could they at least run one regular (120v/15a) circuit + wall outlet to each parking spot? Is that too much to ask?

That's enough electricity to give every EV car an extra 60 miles of EV range overnight. And would be plenty for any other use (ebikes and the like)

ianai4• 7 years ago

I’m similarly perplexed at RE. For one, I make a good living and yet I can’t find decent, affordable homes near me. They’re all dated and much too expensive/soft. Dated in that they almost never have AC despite climate change making it necessary in the area - and rampant lead paint/asbestos.

Apartment buildings are similarly dated. Last I looked, in a big city apartment complexes were rare if they had one or two charging spots. They don’t exist in smaller or less affluent towns.

I think RE suffers from a similar situation as infrastructure regarding retrofitting and upkeep in the US. Once it’s built, there’s almost no inherent market mechanism for keeping structures up to date.

bluntfang• 7 years ago

they almost never have AC despite climate change making it necessary in the area

I'm really sorry but this isn't how climate change works. Climate change is a slow increase in average temperature over 100+ years that has dramatic impact on lots of things, but probably not the "need" for AC.

dredmorbius5• 7 years ago

Location / metro area?

Klathmon3• 7 years ago

I know this is getting a little off topic, but I'm as surprised as you that electric charging isn't taking on at parking lots and structures much as I expected.

I mean even Disney only has like 2-6 charging spots in each of their parking lots designed to hold over 12,000 cars per lot!

And then you look at other parking structures and see that they have a token charger or 2 and the few I've reached out to never have any plans on increasing the number of them.

steelframe2• 7 years ago

People don't like to spend money until they're in real pain. If you don't go to Disney because you have purchased a car that can't go there unless there are electric charge stations, I don't think that's painful for them yet.

hodgesrm• 7 years ago

Market penetration by electric vehicle just isn't very high. It's in the very low single digits in the US as of 2018 and was far lower before. [1] Most parking structures were built well before it got near 1%. I doubt the availability will change very quickly without legislation to encourage retrofitting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_t...

praneshp2• 7 years ago

qq: why is an expectation that there must be charging spots for electric cars? Dedicated parking lots for green vehicles, sure I can see some logic behind cities enforcing that. But I don't show up at your parking lot and expect a mini gas pump at my spot.

cobookman• 7 years ago

Most buildings last more than 20 years. I get you can make rennovations...however if you plan for the future during construction those rennovations can be much cheaper.

For example making their be excess circuit breaker capacity during construction doesn't cost much and enables ev charging to be added at a later date for less money than if that spare electrical capacity wasn't installed

mcculley9• 7 years ago

This is not the conclusion reached by the people spending money currently trying to retrofit the garages.

cplantijn• 7 years ago

I've worked as an intern at a commercial property company (Colliers International) several years ago. One thing I've learned is that commercial property (be it office or residential) is always being sold. They are essentially large bonds you can touch and live in.Party A develops or buys the building, gains an annuity via rent, attempts to raise rent slowly over a few years (thus increasing the value of the property), and selling it to Party B, which repeats the process. In commercial residential buildings, this process happens faster than in an office building because leases are shorter and residential tenants can accept rent raises every 2-3 years. In this business model, Long Term thinking is not in the best interest of making profit.

wallace_f• 7 years ago

Markets are made by both buyers and sellers. Demand is ostensibly driven by consumers, and value created by meeting consumer demands.

Are consumers demanding the above with their money and not just their mouths? I doubt it.

pault2• 7 years ago

Every two to three years? The apartments I've lived in raise the rent by $100 every year without fail.

Spooky23• 7 years ago

Don’t forget the tax shelter aspect of it. Many real estate transactions are driven by moving tax liabilities around.

enraged_camel• 7 years ago

>I don't know how it works elsewhere, but the entire real estate industry in Florida is not capable of long term thinking.

They aren't incentivized to think long-term, because they are making money hand-over-fist. Whatever they build gets sold at very high margins because consumers aren't educated (thanks to things like Florida banning the term "climate change" from school textbooks) and don't have modern expectations.

CPLX• 7 years ago

This article is patent nonsense. Nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen to Miami in 50 years including the author, and an anecdotal poll of front line real estate agents is mindless.

Even in that context the real estate agent’s worldview seems a lot more sanguine than hers. History has shown in this country that you’re a lot more likely to be right predicting that the rich will figure out how to preserve their assets than betting on the other side of that argument.

A shame because it’s an interesting topic.

What will a city like Miami look like in 50 years? It’s an interesting question with a lot of unpredictability in it, based on combinations of climate science, financial predictions, cultural shifts, and some guesswork.

Would have loved to read an article about the various perspectives on that, but that would have required the author to really do some work. Instead they decided they knew the answer already and flew there to make fun of people just trying to get through a day at work.

stevenwoo2• 7 years ago

There's a bit of that in this older article. The problem of spoiling of fresh water is insurmountable.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/miami-ho...

chr1• 7 years ago

Why is it insurmountable? With cheap solar energy desalination becomes cheaper. And even without that countries like Israel now use desalinated water for 70% of their total water use.

Tsubasachan• 7 years ago

Rich people have multiple passports, Swiss bank accounts and real estate in New Zeeland for when shit goes down. They have options. Namely get the hell out of Dodge. I don't think they are really all that attached to Miami.

bilbo0s4• 7 years ago

Miami's mistake was in not developing their port to be a more critical piece of infrastructure to the United States. It's just not that important as a port. As a piece of infrastructure in the US portfolio, it's totally expendable. It's just not a New Orleans, or Norfolk, or Galveston/Houston type port.

Not sure what the best way forward for Miami is? Dams and pumps won't help, because they sit on limestone. They could try to recreate Venice, but they already have some fairly serious issues with algae blooms. Shallow canals will definitely not help those issues. I don't know? Maybe there will be some new technique for living with water than comes along, and they can implement that technology?

But you're correct, at the moment, the most reasonable course of action is definitely, "Get the hell out of Dodge."

js2• 7 years ago

“Rich is a fleet of private planes with a decoy to hide your scent”:

https://youtu.be/N7Wami6CJiA

scurvy4• 7 years ago

There's a ton of dumb, rich money in Miami pushing prices up to embezzle money out of corrupt regimes all over the world. When things get bad, they'll just find the next place and fly out on private jets. Those flying commercial will be left holding the bag.

Just remember that Miami Beach isn't Miami. There are a lot of Miami residents who don't feel like putting a dime into Miami Beach because it's only tourists and foreigners.

malchow• 7 years ago

I agree. The opening of the article intrigued me, so I read it. All I could think was: what fun to read about a lady who has never met a real estate agent !

YjSe2GMQ• 7 years ago

It gives one schadenfreude to think that such people live in Miami. If only we could move all climate change deniers to low lying areas, and get others out.

king_magic• 7 years ago

You really think it’s nonsense? I mean, it’s pretty clear what’s going to happen. The city will be under water, and relatively speaking, fairly soon. It’s basic physics at the end of the day.

Beyond that, this article really cuts to the heart of the astounding carelessness and wastefulness of humanity. IMHO, we deserve what we’re about to get.

fencepost3• 7 years ago

Nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen to Miami in 50 years including the author

True enough if you want detailed predictions, but the generalizations that are pretty much assured are bad enough. Will there be 3 feet of rise in that time? Unlikely. 1? Maybe, maybe not. How much rise does there actually need to be for raw sewage in the streets to be an issue any time there's a heavy rain?

The other thing is storm surge in hurricanes. Nobody can tell you now exactly how high future storm surges will be, but a foot of rise still means that the same amount of storm surge will be a foot higher than in the past - 2 feet higher than a century ago. With increasing storm intensity due to higher energy levels those surges and rainfall totals are only going to get higher.

nikdaheratik• 7 years ago

You say that, but Detroit is a pretty good counterexample. Tons of money / land just left to rust because it wasn't worth the effort. And that was just due to industrial changes not even something approaching a natural process.

If the ports not worth that much, the beaches (and tourism) has washed away, they've got a new sewage problem due to rising waters, and they can't get fresh water as easily, then what reason is there to rebuild? You need trade, fresh water, and waste removal to keep a city running, and for Miami, they're going to have problems with all three areas.

chadash• 7 years ago

Tl;dr: The author went to Miami and spoke to real estate agents, whose job it is to sell property, whether they thought climate change is going to make real estate a bad purchase. Surprisingly, the real estate agents, whose livelihood depends on selling homes, minimized the dangers of global warming.

Animats• 7 years ago

One company could change all this: Fitch Ratings.

They do credit ratings of packages of securitized mortgages. Right now, they don't look at "will parcel be flooded before the mortgage runs out". If they did, mortgages on submerged property would be much more expensive.

Startup opportunity here. Come up with a system which reads through a package of mortgages and quantifies the climate change risk. Sell this to the major traders in securitized mortgages - AIG (yes, them again), Credit Suisse, etc.

lotsofpulp• 7 years ago

This already happens, and the mortgage is subsidized by the federal government via the National Flood Insurance Program. You wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage without flood insurance, and since private insurance companies won’t offer it at a sufficiently low price, the federal government subsidizes the insurance, therefore allowing the mortgage to be made.

MagicPropmaker• 7 years ago

This article may have been better if she didn't spend so much time mocking people's lifestyles and tastes.

anonu• 7 years ago

I don't doubt the sea level is rising and that Miami will be inundated. But I think there's too much money and development put into that city so people won't just give up and leave in 30 years. Instead I think there will be increased investment in technology and infrastructure to keep the waters at bay. It might become something more akin to Venice or Amsterdam.

Heaven or High Water – Selling Miami's Last 50 Years

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