![\"Partygoers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/MIA_01ANIMALHOUSECOLLAGE.JPG\" "\\"Partygoers")
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Partygoers stumble back at 4 a.m. March 30, 2026, to the The Club at Brickell Bay, 1200 Brickell Bay Dr., Miami.<\/p>\n
Linda Robertson<\/p>\n
lrobertson@miamiherald.com<\/p>\n
Enforce condo codes<\/p>\n
My education in the value of short-term rentals and housing policy began when I was a child, in a building not far from the Brickell Bay condo the Herald profiled in its Animal House series<\/a> and Luis Andre Gazitua mentioned in his Aug. 3 op-ed, \u201cBrickell\u2019s party towers aren\u2019t just chaos \u2014 they\u2019re a housing supply heist<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew devastated our family home in South Kendall. In the most difficult period of my parents\u2019 lives, a short-term rental restored something we had lost: the feeling of home, while our own was being rebuilt. It served us so well that, years later, once my brother and I had left to build our own lives, my parents returned to that same building and stayed for more than two decades.<\/p>\n This is not incidental to Miami\u2019s story; it is part of its fabric. From the laborers Henry Flagler housed as his railroad pushed south in the early 1900s, to the executives of today who rent a condo during Formula 1\u2019s Miami Grand Prix weekend, few industries have withstood the test of time and afforded ordinary people a modest, dignified way to earn income from an asset they already hold.<\/p>\n That capacity for micro-entrepreneurship merits protection in its own right, especially now amid a broader societal reckoning over jobs displaced by artificial intelligence. This moment calls for widening the avenues by which people can earn from what they already own, not narrowing them.<\/p>\n Gazitua\u2019s underlying premise \u2014 that short-term rentals are the engine of Miami\u2019s affordability crisis \u2014 mistakes a symptom for a cause. Rents here have risen for reasons far larger than any building\u2019s leasing calendar: a sustained migration of technology, finance and professional capital to South Florida; a climate that remains among the most desirable in the country; and a construction cycle constrained by rising insurance costs, scarce land and financing conditions that have made new supply slower and costlier to deliver. A handful of towers converting to nightly rentals did not make Miami the least affordable rental market in the nation. A half-decade of demand outpacing supply did.<\/p>\n A good place to look for affordability is in the housing stock we already have. Then-County Commissioner (now City of Miami Mayor) Eileen Higgins advanced the county\u2019s Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH) program, which preserves below-market units by giving owners of older apartment buildings a reason to rehabilitate rather than sell into redevelopment. That is a strategy built on supply and has nothing to do with how a homeowner across town chooses to use her own unit.<\/p>\n None of this excuses the conduct the Herald documented. As a lifelong Miamian who has seen this use at its best and at times, at its worst, I don\u2019t dismiss what residents at The Club at Brickell Bay have had to endure. But the competing interests at stake \u2014 the tranquility they\u2019re entitled to expect and an owner\u2019s ability to earn a living from her own property \u2014 aren\u2019t actually in conflict. They just require someone to distinguish between the two.<\/p>\n The good news is that Miami already has the regulatory apparatus to do it. Quality-of-life ordinances, licensing regimes and code enforcement can target the conduct residents find objectionable \u2014 noise, refuse, an unmanaged rotation of guests \u2014 without disturbing the underlying use, extending the privilege of hosting to responsible operators while withdrawing it from those who abuse it. The remedy exists; it requires only the will to apply it.<\/p>\n I welcome the chance to work alongside Gazitua and the City of Miami toward a solution. The erosion of property rights, however incremental and well-intentioned, does not resolve the described problem. Enforcement does.<\/p>\n Tom Martinelli,<\/p>\n Miami<\/p>\n Repurpose schools<\/p>\n The closing of Miami-Dade County\u2019s underpopulated schools reflects a nationwide trend. When Evanston, Illinois, grade schools began closing, the city turned the Noyes Elementary School, a historic building, into the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in 1980.<\/p>\n Community artists applied for spaces and soon the former classrooms held artists like the Light Opera Company, Piven School of Drama, sculptors, writers, dance troupes, jewelry makers, painters, the Next Theater, etc. In exchange for greatly reduced rents, each artist was required to donate time and expertise to the community. (As a writer, I spent a month exciting children to write at grade schools throughout the city.)<\/p>\n The old Noyes school took on a new life, our rents covered most of the Cultural Center\u2019s operating expenses and the entire community benefited.<\/p>\n Sue Sussman,<\/p>\n Aventura<\/p>\n Israel then, now<\/p>\n