No home in paradise

While millions of people battened down their homes in preparation for Irma, real estate agents in the Florida Keys were receiving messages and calls from prospective buyers. To many, the coming hurricane was an opportunity to buy land in the chain of islands situated at the extreme south of the United States.

“From day one, when we learned that the hurricane was going to hit here, I had people calling me, looking for properties,” says Mila de Mier, a real estate agent who has worked in Key West for 20 years. It’s one of Florida’s most desirable housing markets.

She shows a message she received September 5, five days before the hurricane: “I’m most interested in Key West. I am not against a property that needs work, as long as it’s not a complete knock down. I’m looking forward to seeing what might become available in the next couple of weeks :)”

De Mier continued to receive dozens of similar messages in the days following the hurricane, when authorities still hadn’t authorized evacuated residents to return to their homes. The buyers said they had the cash to make a purchase immediately, that they didn’t care if the house was a total loss: they wanted to buy anywhere within ground zero of Irma’s zone of devastation in the United States.

Irma arrived to the Keys as a category 4 hurricane on September 10, leaving behind a panorama of destroyed boats and mobile homes, flooded apartments, collapsed roofs, uprooted trees and downed electric lines.

But to some, the destruction was seen as an opportunity. The storm did the bulldozer work that many speculators had hoped for. Now, hungry buyers and developers are threatening to displace the thousands of workers that call the islands home. George Neugent, who was a mayor of Monroe County when Irma hit, estimated that the hurricane could displace more than 20% of the workers in the area’s tourism sector. De Mier warns there are plenty of people ready to take their place in paradise.

“For those who want to throw in the towel… the vultures are flying,” she says.

According to the first calculations made by Monroe County, home of the Keys, more than 10,000 homes were damaged, representing more than 18% of homes in the area.

For de Mier, Irma marked the beginning of an “epidemic” that’s going to leave many people homeless. The area between Cudjoe Key, some 20 miles north of Key West, and some of the higher keys, like Big Pine, Marathon or Islamorada, were hit hardest. Her company, Southermost Realty, went from having more than 200 properties for rent per month to just one in October.

“The demand is incredible: I have so many, many calls every day. And now that the season is beginning, all of these people who have been left without a home have to compete with the tourists,” she says.

No place in paradise

Among those who are trying to find an affordable place to rent is Yoly Navamuel, a thin, energetic Cuban-American woman who moved into a trailer park in Plantation Key with her wife in 2008 to enjoy their retirement.

Navamuel left behind long days as a mortgage broker in Miami to work as a server. She bought an old trailer for $20,000 and fixed it up to her liking. Her wife got a job as a teacher.

“It was a very rich life here. You know, in Miami, we worked 20 hours a day. Not here. Here, you work from 10 to 4,” she says. “At 5 p.m., you’re in your house, drinking your margarita, looking at the water. We had a porch where we sat and looked at the ocean. You came from the boat and you could take a swim watching the stars.”

But Irma took the home that they’d built and the restaurant where she worked. Within a few hours, she and her wife were left with nothing.

And she wasn’t alone. The hurricane turned the lives of the more than 100 families who lived in the Sea Breeze Trailer Park upside down. The majority of them were workers or retirees who had managed to save enough to buy themselves a trailer and rent land.

“Here, there was a man who lived there 40 years, an old guy, and his trailer is gone,” Navamuel says, pointing to the destroyed debris. Poor guy.”

Now, there are rumors that the land is being converted into a luxury urban development, one that would be much more profitable for its owners.

Replacing trailer parks with complexes is an attractive option for builders, de Mier explains, since the waiting time to obtain permits is shorter.

After the hurricane, the company that managed the Sea Breeze Trailer Park cut off access to the development.

Administrators of Sun Communities, the company in charge of the park, told Navamuel they would soon come and take away the debris.

“They told us that it’s going to take a year or a year-and-a-half to get back on its feet. That they’re going to tear down all the trailers. They’re asking for our titles to destroy them and carry them off as scrap,” she says.

Univision News contacted Sun Communities to inquire about plans for the land. There was no response at the time of publication.

While Navamuel and her wife search for an affordable place to live in the Keys, many of their neighbors have already left. One couple, who worked at a nearby nuclear plant, decided to move to Las Vegas after losing two trailers. Another couple decided to move north to start from scratch in Homestead.

"Nobody can afford to live here. Who can pay $2,000 a month?” she asks.

For decades, mobile home parks like Sea Breeze have been one of the few housing options available to workers in the area. But trailers are among the structures that are most vulnerable to hurricanes.

The situation is worse for those who are undocumented, who are afraid to seek help because of their immigration status. They’re left with no option but to live in partially destroyed trailers or crammed into friends’ homes.

María -- who preferred not to use her real name to protect her identity – is a 35-year-old Honduran woman who has lived in the Keys for eight years. The trailer that she rented for $1,200 a month flooded, leaving two rooms uninhabitable, destroying her belongings, and a good part of the electrical system.

Now, she and her husband and their two children, ages 8 and 12, sleep crammed together in the living room. They have a dehumidifier running constantly to manage mold.

Irma also scared off tourists. Since the hurricane hit, the owner of the restaurant where María worked has opened only sporadically. She and her husband now rely on his restaurant salary.

The Fort Lauderdale company that owns the trailer hasn’t told them whether they plan to fix it.

Maria and her husband are looking for a home, but it’s nearly impossible to find anything in the Keys without papers. “I don’t want to move, but imagine: given what’s happening, it’s possible I won’t find anything here,” she says.

An exodus of workers

Irma is likely to provoke an exodus of workers from the Keys. The owners of restaurants and tourism businesses say many of their employees have announced they’re moving to other places because of a lack of housing.

Authorities are also worried. “We’re very concerned and we’re already seeing workers who say that they can’t afford to rebuild here or that their landlords has told them that they’re going to raise the rent in order to make repairs and they can’t afford it,” says Heather Carruthers, the commissioner of Monroe, who has been assigned by the county to address the crisis.

The problem is not new. During the housing crisis of 2010, many workers lost their homes, which ended up in the hands of people who wanted a vacation home in the Keys. According to county data, more than 40% of constructions in this chain of islands are used as second homes.

The strict building codes limit new constructions, and the lack of space to build houses inflates prices. There’s only one highway in and out of the Keys – US-1, which connects the Keys with the rest of the Florida peninsula – so the authorities want to limit population growth to ensure that they can evacuate all residents within 24 hours in the event of a hurricane.

Carruthers says her team says is trying to find solutions to stem the exodus of workers from the service sector, including teachers, nurses – people who she says “sustain the community.”

“I hope we can create enough affordable housing so that people who love the Keys and who have made their living here will be able to stay here. We also care about the people who want to have second homes here, but this is clearly a problem we have to tackle,” she acknowledges.

“They wanted to get rid of the houseboats and the trailers, and Irma did it for them”

The hurricane revived the Keys’ existential dilemma: to find equilibrium between the demands of the tourism sector and those of the workers who sustain it.

That was clear in mid-October, when authorities rushed to prepare for Fantasy Fest, a celebration that inaugurates Key West’s tourism high season.

While the local newspaper recommended residents “take a break from Irma” as the festival arrived, cleaning teams were working to remove mountains of debris from the highway and many of those who lost their homes in the hurricane didn’t know where to go.

Some feared being removed from the hotels where they were staying to make room for visitors, who, in high season, might pay three times as much for a room.

“I see them cleaning up the side of the road, more concerned about tourism than whether or not these [people] get back to work,” lamented Karen Carter, a 52-year old woman originally from Tennessee, who has blond, wavy hair down to her waist, a youthful appearance, and a raspy voice.

Irma swallowed the houseboat where she lived with her boyfriend in Ramrod Key, just a little more than 5 miles from where the hurricane made landfall. They planned to travel around the Caribbean aboard the boat when she retired.

In addition, she lost her job in a plant that processes sea cucumbers, a marine animal that’s harvested and sent to China, where it’s used culinary and medicinal properties. The company’s facilities were totally destroyed: the storage containers were piled atop one another and the electricity lines “looked like spaghetti,” she says.

The hurricane totally transformed the paradise where she arrived eight years ago. She says she has never felt more lost in her life.

“Before, things were easier here. But things are easier for the rich. They wanted to get rid of the houseboats and trailers, and Irma did it for them,” she says.

She chose to live on a boat because it was the only thing she could afford. Now, housing has become a crisis for workers like her.

Eight of her friends have already left, with no plans to return. She says she would too, if she had an offer.

“This is what Irma is doing to the Keys. We won’t be able to live here,” she says.