Miami's poverty a grim backdrop to Super Bowl glitz

[Synnical]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-orl-superbowl2807jan28,0,6832206.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

<snippage>

But the world's most-watched sporting event is also offering an opportunity to shine a laser beam on the other Miami: the third-poorest city in the nation, where living wages and affordable housing are out of the reach of many of the residents helping to foot the Super Bowl tab.

Against a backdrop of lavish parties -- some with admission rivaling the $3,000-plus going rate for tickets to the Indianapolis Colts/Chicago Bears game -- advocates for the homeless and poor are staging a "Reality Tour." On Wednesday, a bus will take a few of the thousands of journalists converging on South Florida on a short drive to communities a world away from trendy Miami Beach, where the reporters will work, stay and presumably play.

"There is one game and one dream, but different realities," said Joseph Phelan, an activist with the Miami Workers Center. "Miami is the playground of the rich and famous, but it is not paradise for the poor . . . and the only thing the city and county are doing about it is filling their pockets with tourism dollars from the Super Bowl."

New foe: Gentrification

Among the stops will be Umoja Village, a shantytown established last fall by squatters who claimed the city-owned land under a 1998 court settlement reached after Super Bowls past, when the city cleared out its homeless by confiscating and burning their belongings.

That practice is now illegal, but the squatters hope to highlight what they contend is the newest way of displacing the poor: gentrification. In many depressed neighborhoods, low-income and public-housing apartments have been razed to make way for pricey new condos, or for "affordable housing" that, despite millions spent, was never built.

More at link above.

[salin]

1. I hope that a number of journalists take part of this tour

and are touched enough to begin writing about poverty in Miama - and poverty in general.

[muntrv]

2. Sweeping out homeless people is a Super Bowl tradition. Detroit did the

same thing for Super Bowl 40.

[Captain Hilts]

3. At least Joe Robbie Stadium was built withe Joe Robbie's money, not Miami's.

I have a real soft spot for the Orange Bowl.

Redskins' FedEx/Jack Kent Cooke stadium was built by private money.

Raven's stadium was built with tax dollars - and is barely used 20 days a year.