Homeowners in Little Haiti are aging. Here's what the next generation is facing

Miami Herald

6 days ago

People who grew up in Little Haiti in its heyday have a lot of the same memories: women carrying baskets on their heads with products to sell, Rara bands filling the Friday night air with music, the smell of Haitian cuisine seeping from the windows. The culture was everywhere.
But the once-vibrant community that welcomed wave after wave of Haitian immigrants has changed so much in the past decade that the remaining homeowners in the community that are of Haitian descent wonder if their dwindling numbers can keep the culture alive.
Institutions like the Little Haiti Cultural Complex, Chef Creole and Libreri Mapou still serve as cultural anchors for the neighborhood, which was officially named 'Little Haiti' in 2016, but for Haitians who own homes in the area, it feels like 'a ghost town.'
Ashley Toussaint, whose father had lived in Little Haiti since 1988, said the neighborhood has become a shell of itself as he's seen the area overrun by gentrification. Slowly but surely, the many Haitian faces Toussaint used to see began to vanish. He points to the forced eviction of residents at the former Sabal Palm housing project that began in the 1990s as a turning point. Once filled with Haitian immigrants, it was later transformed into Design Place.
'It changed from being a Haitian community to a white and Latino community,' he said of the complex. 'That was parallel to what was happening in Wynwood. I felt like that was the realization that Little Haiti was no longer…new people were coming to the neighborhood en masse.'
Toussiant is one of a shrinking number of homeowners living in Little Haiti. According to the Miami-Dade County property appraiser's office, out of the 7,269 dwelling units in the area — including single-family homes, condos, duplex, apartments and public housing — there are only 736 homesteaded properties, making the owner-occupancy rate to about 10 percent. Most of those owner-occupied dwellings are among the 1,017 single-family homes in Little Haiti, of which 478 have a homestead exemption.
When the Little Haiti Revitalization Trust, in conjunction with FIU, revealed a draft of the trust's strategic plan, it was found that since 2019, 37 percent of properties purchased in the area were owned by outside investors. The plan also noted that Little Haiti is home to 21,759 residents, of whom 37 percent — about 8,152 — are Haitian-American. And between 2010 and 2023, the neighborhood lost five percent of its population of Haitian descent.
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Little Haiti Revitalization Trust CEO Joann Milord said the trust recognizes it's an uphill battle with trying to retain and attract residents. Still, she emphasized the importance of the community to maintain the neighborhood's character.
'It's important to recognize that there is a significant number of Haitians that still live in Little Haiti, and that we need to find a way to not only preserve them, but help them to climb to a higher economic class, either through education, job training and improving the conditions in which they live as well, so that they want to maintain the neighborhood,' she said.
Aging homeowners and family assets
For Little Haiti homeowners like Toussaint, keeping the property in the family has presented its own set of challenges. Nearly 25 percent of Little Haiti's homeowners are 65 years and older, according to the strategic plan, making the properties both a valuable family asset and a financial burden.
Toussaint's father Elisson purchased his home in 1988 and Toussaint became a co-owner of the property in 2017, when the city had it condemned. At that time, the home was declared an unsafe structure and was set for demolition, Toussaint said. He filed a quitclaim deed to add him as an owner of the property, paid the necessary fees to rectify the situation and has maintained it ever since. He's lived in the home since 2019.
'I didn't really inherit so much, I kind of saved it,' he said. Now he's also inherited the job of fending off the deluge of potential buyers of the property. He said he's been offered $250,000 for the home, which he says is worth an estimated $700,000.
Like Toussaint, Cassel Paul said he's had to fend off predatory buyers calling to purchase his parents' home, often offering far less than what it's worth. 'I had to finally tell them to stop calling every day, five, six times a week,' he said. ''We want to buy your house'. Listen, my folks own this house. They live here. If they sell you this house, where are they going to live?'
The Pauls moved to what is now Little Haiti in 1971, when Paul said the neighborhood was predominantly white and very unwelcoming to Haitians. 'To make that adjustment … all of a sudden you have people not liking you, disliking you just because of who you are. That was a shock. It was a shock to the system,' he said.
Paul's 93-year-old father Gaspard lost a house to foreclosure before settling in the current home, which is where he raised his kids. Cassel Paul is determined to protect this family asset, but the fate of the home once his parents are gone has yet to be decided, whether he and siblings sell or keep it.
'This is their home, so we're here. We leave it at that,' he said.
Paul pointed to the low wages as part of the reason residents are leaving for more affordable areas, and taking with them the culture that cultivated Little Haiti. According to the trust's strategic plan, 50 percent of Little Haiti's homeowners and 63 percent of renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs.
'The bulk of the culture is lost,' Cassel Paul said. 'I listen to folks talk about bringing jobs and more affordable housing to Little Haiti, but affordable housing for who? When you bring in $13 hour jobs, but you're charging thousands of dollars in rent, it doesn't jive.'
Getting in on the changes in the area
Another challenge homeowners face is the influx of short term and vacation rentals in the area.
Airbnb, the short-term vacation rental company, says only one percent of all available housing in Miami-Dade County is listed on their site, but company did not provide data down to the neighborhood level. There are about 415 listings in Little Haiti as of July 11, according to Airbtics, a website which tracks Airbnb listings and analytics. Still, Airbnbs can be profitable for homeowners: The typical host earned an estimated $15,000 in 2024, according to Airbnb.
For families like Erica Desinord's that may be the solution to keeping their family's home. When Desinord's grandfather purchased his home in 1988, Little Haiti was still a vibrant neighborhood where she recalled going outside to play.
Now, with her grandfather's recent passing, Desinord said the family will turn the property into a short-term rental property. It's a way to honor him, a man ever determined to keep his home.
'Because he always said he worked hard for this, he didn't have an education, all he did was work,' Desinord said. 'This is his home, so we didn't want to sell it and get money.' Desinord said her grandfather had been approached several times about selling his home, but he would always give an emphatic, 'no.' 'So we want to keep that 'no' going.'
As new development encroaches upon Little Haiti, the Little Haiti Revitalization Trust, which is set to vote on its drafted strategic plan as early as September, is making efforts to increase homeownership among longtime residents. Their homebuyer and rehab program, which officially launched in June, provides down payment assistance to residents renting in Little Haiti looking to purchase a home or to those desiring to buy a home in Little Haiti. They haven't received one application yet.
'We have to be cognizant of the fact that development is happening in Little Haiti and that it's a force of nature that we cannot stop,' she said. 'However, we have to try to see how it is developed and can be inclusive, and see which role the community that's currently there can be involved in that.'
Still, as much as they try to hold onto their family legacies, Desinord, the Pauls and Toussaint, acknowledge that change is inevitable. They simply want a say in those changes.
'Let's be part of the action. Some people want to be enemies of change and then not benefit at all,' Toussaint said. 'I do feel like we still have the power to represent our culture.'