NY Times editorial

By John Dorschner
    
    While Miami-Dade plans a $200-million redo of its largest public housing project, Liberty Square, in the heart of its largest black area, Liberty City, the New York Times on Sunday published a searing, insightful editorial: Ending the Cycle on Racial Isolation.
    The editorial noted that while the Fair Housing Act of 1968 set forth high-minded goals, "elected officials have often reinforced segregation through a range of policies. Among the most pernicious of these is the practice of building subsidized housing mainly in existing ghettos instead of areas that offer low- and moderate-income families access to safe neighborhoods, good jobs and schools that allow their children to thrive."
     The editorial is available HERE.
   

Liberty Square

"Good things can happen when the cycle of racial isolation is broken," the editorial says, citing the example of what happened in Mount Laurel, N.J., as reported at length in a 2013 book, Climbing Mount Laurel, by Princeton University Press.
    So far in Miami, the dialogue about Liberty Square consists of county government saying we will rebuild Liberty Square in its present location while its residents worry that they won't be allowed to move back in and the county assuring them they will.
    As this blog has persistently reported, studies show the Miami area is one of the most segregated in the nation.