Razing Liberty Square film banner
Miami was built on the water with seafront property owned by the affluent. Poor people, Black folks, were confined to the edge of town and many were housed since the 1930s in the federally built, segregated Liberty Square housing project. Liberty Square was a low-slung compound of concrete, barrack-like buildings. Not an architectural gem, yet old timers recall it fondly, calling it a village, a community, and old photos show families and children playing under the palm trees.
One thing the planners didn’t foresee: the value of the land under Liberty Square, built on a ridge, as the sea level rises.
The documentary Razing Liberty Square, debuting Jan. 29 on PBS’ Independent Lens, focuses on what happened when the City of Miami cut a deal with an urban developer to tear the project down and build a “mixed income development” with street-level businesses and apartments overhead. The first question Oscar-nominated director Katja Esson confronts is the fate of Liberty Square’s residents. And that’s not all. Is razing the project part of a larger, sinister real estate scheme plotted with the complicity of local officials?
Esson includes many voices from the effected neighborhoods as well as the developers, gathering multiple perspectives that nevertheless point to the conclusion that Liberty Square’s inhabitants (and their neighbors) had good reason for suspicion. At first, the developers promised gradual tear downs and construction, shuttling residents around the property and finding them gleaming new apartments within the new development. But then, they are offered housing vouchers for rental units elsewhere in the metro area, complete with security deposit and first month’s rent but no guaranty that landlords won’t jack up the price. Something similar happened several years earlier at another former Miami housing project whose residents were handed vouchers and told to leave. Many became poorer or even homeless, unable to keep up with rising rates.
Liberty Square residents responded with anger and confusion. Some, especially older folks, wanted to stay put. Many were skeptical of the urban developers with good historical reasons. Despite the developers’ show of hosting “community meetings,” the people of Liberty Square were presented with a series of fate accomplis. And at the same time, their neighbors, Black homeowners in the modest surrounding neighborhood called Liberty City, were pestered by real estate agents to sell and move. But where to?
Coercive gentrification in Miami, one of America’s hottest real estate markets, is one facet of Razing Liberty Square. The documentary hears out the problems of Liberty Square residents—gun violence, dangerous drug dealing, social disintegration and malign neglect—compounded by climate change. Climate justice is an increasingly important aspect of social justice, and in the present state of things, the poor are slated to bear the heaviest burdens of a world that’s getting hotter.
