You can hear, you can smell culture.
You can taste it.
Culture for us is everything.
Culture is identity.
But that culture is under threat from a new and growing phenomenon:
climate gentrification.
We’re in Little Haiti, or in Creole, "Ti Ayiti."
It’s a Miami neighborhood filled with a thriving Haitian immigrant community and ...
rising property rates.
Everyone who has property in Little Haiti, they want to kick them out.
This is my home.
Little Haiti is one of the fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in the United States.
And the climate crisis has a lot do with it.
Experts expect Miami’s sea level to rise more than a foot in just 25 years.
We're actually seeing the effects of climate change.
We're seeing tidal flooding on sunny days.
We're realizing that the seas are rising.
The city’s famed beaches will eventually be submerged at high tide.
And Little Haiti sits on a ridge far above these properties.
Suddenly somebody realized, "Oh wow ... this seems to be one of the highest elevated points in Miami."
Its location has made it a hotspot for development,
and Haitians are being forced out.
More than 30,000 Haitian immigrants live in Miami, which has the largest population of Haitians in the U.S.
Michel Bien-Aimé is one of them.
He bought a house in Little Haiti 30 years ago.
Now, it’s prime real estate.
He's received dozens of letters from realtors offering to buy his property.
That’s one.
But this one, that’s the one that scare me.
"Dear Mr. Bien-Aimé, It's time for you to move."
They scared me because they told me that's the time for me to leave the property.
This is my property.
I don’t say I have for sale. So this is disrespect.
I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. No, no, no, no.
They try to buy from us for cheap money, and then they're going to make big money.
But I don’t want to sell the house.
Michel chose not to respond to any of the letters, and his case isn’t an isolated one.
Neither is his immigration story.
In the ‘70s and ’80s, there was a surge of immigrants from Haiti
due to political unrest in the country.
Little Haiti became their cultural stronghold,
and now climate gentrification is threatening it.
Climate gentrification in Miami is about the movement of people towards the higher ground
and the displacement of those who have historically
lived and developed communities on that high ground.
Miami Beach’s coveted oceanfront properties are some of the most vulnerable
in the country to sea level rise.
Almost one-third of the area is expected to see chronic flooding by 2045.
This means that it would see flooding at least 26 times a year,
or on average, once every other week.
Miami is historically low lying, beautiful, built.
It used to be swamp, and all the rich, beautiful people wanted to live on the coast.
And those communities of color were displaced to the railroad tracks.
About one-fifth of Miami-Dade County lies below 1 foot of elevation at high tide.
Projections say that if the sea rises by just 2 feet, Miami would look like this.
And with 6 feet of sea level rise, it would look like this.
The heart of Little Haiti lies here, at almost 13 feet above sea level.
The cost of a home in Little Haiti has gone up because it's on high ground.
Because value's up, they can't afford to buy in their communities anymore.
The rate of that gentrification is now accelerating.
In Miami, sea level rise is no longer hypothetical. It’s happening now.
The city already experiences increased flooding during high tides.
So those neighborhoods at higher elevation are more appealing to developers.
And those areas are also some of the poorest.
It is a reality that coping with climate change requires resources
and many, many of us don't have the resources.
So in that sense, Florida is a microcosm of what all coastal counties, cities, states are going to have to be facing.
Climate gentrification hits communities like Little Haiti the hardest.
Schiller Sanon-Jules was forced to shutter his once thriving secondhand store after a dramatic rental hike.
Our store used to be from there to where the awning is.
So we had about 5,000 square feet.
Our lease ended after five years, and the owners wanted us to pay $4,800
instead of $2,500 in order for us to renew the lease.
Schiller opened up a stall at the Little Haiti Cultural Center down the street from his old store.
But the stall is small and his business has suffered.
We still had a lot of stuff. We had to throw away a lot of it.
Our business just went down the drain.
Two years later, Schiller has yet to open up another store like the one he had.
They're gradually getting us out of here little by little
because the rents are getting so expensive and people cannot afford them anymore.
The Haitians have been pushed out.
And this was an identity for us as Haitians,
a place where we felt like home.
Tessa Painson runs a local organization helping provide affordable homes for the Haitian community.
Developments are coming in that are not inclusive of the low-income residents of the area.
And those new businesses do not create opportunities for those who have been here forever,
who've built this area to be able to remain a part of it.
These big luxury commercial and residential projects are contributing to gentrification in Little Haiti.
We embrace our roots and innovate into the future.
Technologies will advance, expanding our community and our opportunity to thrive.
This the promotional video for the billion-dollar Magic City Innovation District.
The megaproject spans seven city blocks in the center of Little Haiti.
The impact that it has is not just on the four corners that it occupies.
The cost of living is going to increase blocks and blocks around that new development
Developers claim that no one has been displaced, but the project includes thousands of luxury apartments.
The average income for a Haitians in Miami is less than $25,000 per year.
The other side of of climate gentrification is increasing traffic, changing demographics.
The small businesses that catered to the Haitian community.
Now when you have less and less Haitians, you will have less and less customers.
And so that also brings down the businesses and forces them to close down.
Each closure leaves a scar on the existing community.
And community members like François Alexandre are leading efforts to maintain the essence of Little Haiti.
The problem that I see with these big developments is that they don't fit,
they don't fit into a small residential neighborhood.
Culture for us is everything. Culture is identity. Culture is also economics.
The culture is important in terms of maintaining it and maintaining it for generations to come.
This is everything that we're telling people to give up and that they've worked for years to establish
We don't really care if you're going to rebuild the family, to rebuild a village where you're going.
All we know is that we need you to go.
But Little Haiti residents are fighting further displacement.
Dozens went to City Hall to speak out against the latest megaproject, Eastside Ridge.
If the city approves the application, the developer would build more than 3,000 residential units,
5,000 parking spaces and nearly 300,000 square feet of commercial space.
It could displace hundreds of residents.
The developer’s application hasn’t met many city requirements, including community consultation.
And so, the application has been deferred.
Community groups realize they can’t stop development in Little Haiti.
But they demand more affordable housing for residents.
Tessa’s organization just unveiled a six-unit affordable housing complex.
Together with the families that will soon be moving into this building,
we are excited. And at the same time, we want to let everyone know this is just a stepping stone.
According to the organization, all of the apartments will be occupied by members of the Haitian community.
But they know many more are needed in order to fight displacement and preserve Little Haiti.
I am so happy that my family is going to be able to find,
they actually get opportunity to move into affordable housing in our community, Ti Ayiti.
We can't avoid change.
Change is good. But change can be humane, and change can be inclusive.
And those communities where you're going in as a large developer,
those communities are not the enemy.
These are people's lives that you're affecting.