Miami Workers Center study shows “How Corporate Welfare Exploits Miami Renters”

The Miami Workers Center (MWC) is a community-based organization which organizes towards dignity, power, and self-determination with workers, tenants, women, and families across Miami. Since 1999, MWC has run grassroots campaigns to strengthen and expand rights and resources for working-class Black and immigrant families in Miami-Dade County.

This past September, the group released a study, “Our Money, Their Monopoly: How Corporate Welfare Exploits Miami Renters,” based on MWC’s surveys of over 1,000 low-income tenants of corporate landlords in South Florida.  Ninety percent of the tenants named rent increases as their top complaint and said they could not afford more increases.  “You’re typically supposed to spend 30% of your income on rent, and that’s becoming almost impossible,” said Maria Llorens, MWC’s Policy and Research Director and one of the study’s authors, told NBC6.

MWC conducted the study with a Participatory Action Research framework and relied on the participation and insight of MWC members throughout the process. All materials were in three languages – English, Haitian Creole, and Spanish.

Other key findings of the study were:

• 83% of tenants interviewed had at least one major issue with the condition of their apartment
• 59% of tenants named multiple issues. The most common were structural issues, pests, mold, and appliances.
• 72% of tenants that were interviewed said their landlord/management does not make repairs or makes repairs that don’t fix the problem. As a result, 1 in 4 tenants said they have to take care of their own repairs or pest control.
• Only 7.4% of tenants were happy with their landlord or property manager.

“Florida’s low corporate tax rates, generous subsidies for developers, and deregulation of landlord-tenant law have attracted real estate investment firms who have made record-breaking profits for their investors, therefore making it much more difficult for everyday working families to access safe, stable, and affordable housing close to their work and schools,” the study said. (p. 10)

Out of a dozen corporate landlords included in their survey, MWC said that “three stood out for the severity of maintenance issues, claims of mistreatment of renters, and rent increases that push their tenants further into precarity”: the national private equity firms Blackstone and Vitus Group, and the Florida-based company YMP Real Estate Management.

Blackstone is the largest landlord in the U.S. with over 230,000 units. From MWC’s surveys, Blackstone tenants reported unaffordable rent increases, difficulty getting the company to make repairs, and a negative rating of Blackstone or its property managers.

“I cry alone in my car and in the bathroom so my family won’t see me, a Blackstone tenant told MWC about the financial strain of rent increases. (p. 14)

The study noted that Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth of $38 billion, and received $1.3 billion in compensation in 2022 – a 15% increase from the $1.1 billion he received in 2021. (p. 14) “He’s there to make money and not help people,” one Blackstone tenant said about Schwarzmann. (p. 13)

Many landlords get financing from the Government Sponsored Enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to purchase large apartment buildings. The study notes that these loans require landlords to disclose financial information about their buildings. According to the study, for properties that received Fannie Mae loans, “the landlord spent only 2-4 cents of every dollar of rent on maintenance and kept 33 cents as net cash to increase the value of their company.” (p. 8)

MWC noted that throughout the project, tenants said that what they need is rent that is affordable and housing that is safe. MWC highlighted policies that would significantly benefit low-income tenants in Miami-Dade, such as rent control, right to counsel, and right to organize.

The Florida legislature passed the Live Local Act in 2023, which preempted rent control and removed a carve-out that allowed local governments to enact rent control for up to a year to address a crisis. This preempted the Orange County rent stabilization law, which had been approved by 59% of county voters in a ballot initiative. (p. 31)

“Rather than protecting people from predatory business practices and exploitation, U.S. housing policy has largely served to benefit private real estate investors through financial subsidies, public-private partnerships, and legal protections,” the study states. “We need solutions that will limit the overwhelming influence of landlords and shift the balance of power in favor of tenants.”