Wesleyan University The Honors College Racial and Ethnic Conflict in South Florida: Hurricane Andrew and the Housing Crisis by Jeffrey L. Kessner Class of 2007 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in American Studies Middletown, Connecticut April, 2007 CONTENTS PREFACE iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF RACE, ETHNICITY, AND HOUSING IN SOUTH FLORIDA 11 Cuban Immigration Haitian Immigration African-Americans and Race Riots CHAPTER TWO: BEFORE THE STORM: CONCEPTUALIZING RACE AND ETHNICITY 54 Census Data and Categories Pre-Andrew Analysis of South Florida Housing Hurricane Damage and Destruction to Housing CHAPTER THREE: CRISIS AFTER ANDREW: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND HOUSING 87 Forms of Capital Network Theory Relocation and Rebuilding CONCLUSION 126 REFERENCES 133 APPENDIX A: 1990 U.S. CENSUS 138 APPENDIX B: MAPS AND CHARTS 141 iii PREFACE I first developed an interest in hurricanes as an 8-year old child growing up in Palm Beach County, Florida. I distinctly remember sitting on the floor in my parent’s bedroom watching the radar images on the local news station showing Hurricane Andrew spiraling toward South Florida. My father reassured me that the storm would not hit. He had lived in Florida for nearly twenty years and every time the forecasters warned a storm was coming, it would unexpectedly curve away. On the night of August 23rd, 1992, I went to bed not knowing whether I would be starting my first day of second grade the following morning. I slept through the night. My house never lost power. In the morning light, I saw a few tree branches on the ground and learned that school had been canceled. But as I looked around, I remember thinking, “This was a hurricane? What’s all the fuss about?” In the coming days, however, I began to see startling images of complete destruction and utter desperation fewer than 100 miles to the south. Highways were clogged with National Guard trucks trying to make their way to South Dade County with badly needed shipments of food and water. I learned that my family had been extremely fortunate that Andrew was a relatively compact storm and that it veered to the south in the last hours before landfall. Exactly one year later, my third grade teacher introduced herself and explained that she was new to the school. She had recently moved to the area from Homestead, a city completely devastated by Hurricane Andrew. At the same time I started to notice that many families moving into my neighborhood had also fled Andrew’s destruction. Yet, even as a 9-year old, I realized the people I was meeting who left South Dade did not look like the individuals and families I saw on television still struggling to recover. I did not understand why White families were moving away and moving on with their lives while Black families were still living in tent cities, unable to escape the wreckage. In the years since Hurricane Andrew, my understanding of both hurricanes and race and ethnicity has expanded tremendously. At Wesleyan University, I have pursued a double major in sociology and American Studies with a concentration in race and ethnic studies. I have built an interdisciplinary curriculum that seeks to explain the dynamics of race and ethnicity in the United States through a sociological framework. This project represents the culmination of fifteen years of personal interest and four years of formal study in college. It has been a long journey of discovery and an amazing opportunity to research a topic that has intrigued me for so many years. I hope the final product gives justice to the individuals and families who struggled through Hurricane Andrew and offers a conceptual framework to understand how the human effects of natural disasters do not affect all people equally. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project came together because of the guidance and support of J. Kehaulani Kauanui. As my professor in “Methodologies in Ethnic Studies” she helped me focus the topic and formulate a specific methodological plan to investigate. This past academic year, serving as my thesis advisor, Kehaulani has offered constructive criticism and positive feedback on my work. She has pushed me to think about the conceptual framework of the project and motivated me to always dig a little deeper below the surface. I would also like to thank the reference librarians at the Florida International University Library who helped me locate important research for the project. The staff at the National Hurricane Center in Miami was also extremely helpful, facilitating my research in the Center’s library and giving me the opportunity to speak directly with Max Mayfield, who at the time was the director of the National Hurricane Center. Additionally, I would like to extend my gratitude to the researchers and employees at the Laboratory for Social and Behavioral Research at Florida International University. The friendly staff provided me with critical contact information and gave me a copy of the book Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity, Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends. They have put up with me talking about hurricanes and natural disasters for many years. This past year, they have been a great sounding board for thinking through ideas as I have progressed through the thesis-writing process. I would especially like to thank my mother for helping me research information only available in Florida while I was at school in Connecticut. Without your help, this project could not have happened. v INTRODUCTION 1 It was August 23rd, 1992, the day before Hurricane Andrew would make landfall in South Florida. There was widespread apprehension and nervousness. Nobody knew what to expect. A major hurricane had not come ashore in the greater Miami area since the 1960s – a time when the region was much less densely populated. Once considered the winter destination for wealthy socialites from the northeast, over the years Miami had transformed into a multicultural metropolitan center with a large immigrant population from the Caribbean and Latin America. With the absence of destructive hurricanes over the previous three decades, residents had been lulled into a false sense of security, believing that modern technology could protect local infrastructure and that the area was safe from the massive devastation caused by hurricanes earlier in the century. That security was destroyed, along with thousands of homes and countless lives, early on the morning of August 24th, 1992. Initial news reports showed downtown Miami escaping with only minor damage. Trees and traffic signals were down across the city but most buildings appeared to remain structurally intact. Citizens of the city of Miami proper and much of northern Dade County thought South Florida had dodged another bullet. Local meteorologists, however, were not so confident. They knew that Andrew had wobbled to the south in the hour or two before landfall and the storm was an exceptionally compact hurricane, with the most intense winds concentrated in a small area surrounding the eye. Weather stations from cities and towns south of Miami, like Homestead, Florida City, Cutler Ridge, and Kendall, had stopped reporting information immediately before the eye of the storm made landfall. Similarly, the National Hurricane Center, which at that time was located in Homestead, had stopped 2 reporting data during the storm. No information had been received from a large portion of the less densely populated southern part of the Miami metropolitan area. Seasoned meteorologists feared the worst. As the sun rose, the very first helicopters began flying over South Florida. Again, the majority of Dade County breathed a collective sigh of relief. There was damage, but nothing unmanageable. As the day progressed, however, and helicopters flew further south, unimaginable reports and images of massive destruction started to be sent back to television and news stations in Miami. While Miami and northern Dade County may have escaped relatively unscathed, the same could not be said for their neighbors to the south. This type of destruction had not been seen before. Entire neighborhoods were unrecognizable, even to residents. Homes had been ripped to shreds and there were virtually no signs of life. As politicians started hailing the great job of government employees in preparing county residents for the storm, residents of South Dade County who did not evacuate began emerging from the rubble that used to be their homes and sources of livelihood. In the days that followed, innumerable images of families waiting in huge crowds for basic necessities such as ice and water in 90 degree heat were broadcast around the country. These days have been engrained in the minds of all South Floridians who rode through the storm as residents spent days sweating, crying, and questioning how to move on. Looting soon became a major problem and residents had to guard their property, few remaining possessions, and, most importantly, safe food and water, with guns. Help was slow to arrive, partly a result of poor planning, 3 partly a consequence of insufficient communication, and at least to many residents of South Dade County, largely because the government did not care about them. It took many days for the federal government to send in troops to South Dade County to maintain order. Local agencies had been requesting a stronger response from the federal government for days, but to no avail. From the perspective of many residents, however, the presence of troops solidified their notion that they were not worthy of respect and the type of treatment accorded to other Americans. While they appreciated the return to civility, local residents could not believe that preventative action had not been taken sooner. There was a growing sense that the rest of the state and the country did not care about South Dade County. As long as the infrastructure in economically significant Miami was unscathed, policy-makers could turn a blind eye to the complete devastation facing many thousands of residents further south. Residents there were not millionaires and they did not donate huge sums of money to political campaigns, but they felt deserving of promised help from governmental agencies at all political levels. A second frustration was expressed by many residents as well. In addition to the economic justifications stated above, many felt that there was a racial and immigrant component to the perceived discrimination in governmental response time. The demographic composition of South Florida is quite diverse. Many residents are first or second generation immigrants. Tension develops not just between native Anglos and immigrant groups of color, but also between immigrants from different countries. Thus, when analyzing why government agencies were slow to respond to the desperate pleas of South Dade County residents, it is imperative to examine who 4 lived in the destruction zones and who controlled the political and economic resources at the local, state, and national levels. Many residents strongly believed that help did not arrive sooner because many communities in South Dade County were inhabited by large concentrations of migrant workers from Central American countries. Others had significant populations of Haitian immigrants. There were also regions with recent Cuban immigrants, trying to tap into the Cuban network and enclave established in Miami after the Cuban Revolution. These populations believed they lacked the cultural and social capital to use the American political system to get necessary resources after Hurricane Andrew. As days turned into weeks and weeks turned into years, South Florida slowly started returning to some sense of normalcy. In communities throughout South Dade County, efforts to clear away the massive amounts of debris and rebuild neighborhoods and lives started to take shape. Behind the scenes, important decisions had to be made. Hurricane Andrew had created a tabula rasa, nearly everything needed to be rebuilt. Yet the political, economic, and social struggles that took place, largely behind closed doors, followed the conventions and norms established before the storm. Thus, important questions often went unasked. Few examined the cost of new houses and whether the residents had adequate homeowner’s insurance coverage to afford this transition. And many residents did not question why some members of the community had the ability to pick up and move north to Broward or Palm Beach County while others did not. Were these simply personal choices made by individuals and families? Or is there a more significant trend that developed in the housing situation after Hurricane Andrew? 5