| RIPTIDE | ▼ MIAMI BEACH HOMECOMING R MIAMI BEACH 5-YEAR-OLD MISSING FOR SIX MONTHS IS FOUND OUTSIDE ATLANTA. BY JOSHUA CEBALLOS ommel Lassiter has spent the past six months hardly able to sleep and eat, wondering whether his little girl would ever come home. After being awarded shared custody of his 5-year-old daughter Leah-Ranee Rose Las- siter in Miami-Dade family court, Lassiter was supposed to pick her up from the Fien- berg Fisher K-8 Center in Miami Beach on November 22, but the school said she never arrived, and the girl’s mother, Chantelle Iman Dortch, was nowhere to be found. Despite Lassiter’s repeated attempts, Mi- ami Beach police refused to release an Amber Alert for the missing Black girl — because, Lassiter says, they determined the issue was a civil/family matter between him and Dortch (i.e., not police business) and declined to look at the court order documenting Lassiter’s le- gal custody. When Lassiter said he wanted police to perform a welfare check on Leah- Ranee, Lassiter says, the officer told him, “And I want to win the lottery.” An incident report from MBPD notes that “Det. Sgt. Houser met with the complainant at the station and informed him that his case is a child custody dispute incident. Sgt. Houser informed me that an incident report is required in this matter. A case card was is- sued to the complainant.” Six months later, police in Georgia located Leah-Ranee outside Atlanta. She has been re- united with her father and returned home to Miami Beach. “I’m super-excited, I’m crying,” Lassiter tells New Times. “Nobody knew for sure if she was all right, and I needed to see that for my- GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS ▼ LITTLE HAVANA RENOVATING RENT T MIAMI’S LUCKIEST TENANTS LIVE IN THESE $900-A-MONTH ART DECO APARTMENTS. BY JENNA FARHAT he rent is too damn high all across Miami — unless you’re one of the lucky resi- dents of a Little Havana apartment building where tenants pay a paltry $900 a month even after their landlord implemented sweeping renovations. Before restoration efforts began, Dade Heri- tage Trust executive director Chris Rupp says, the two-story, four-unit apartment building at 1401 SW Fifth St. was falling apart. Constructed in 1938, it boasts all the geometric accents of a clas- sic art deco building, but time had taken its toll. “Tenants were struggling,” Rupp tells New Times. “Ovens were being held together by duct Photo courtesy of Rommel Lassiter self that she was okay. Now I’m happy.” As Lassiter’s attorney, Malik Leigh, tells it, last week an unidentified tipster in South Ful- ton, Georgia, half an hour outside of Atlanta, crossed paths with Dortch and her daughter and sensed that something was amiss. After looking up Dortch online, the tipster found a missing poster for Leah-Ranee and read New Times’ coverage of her case, prompting the tipster to call Dortch’s attorney. Leigh says he had told police his client’s daughter was likely in the Atlanta area, where Dortch has family, but that tipster’s call was the first sighting of Leah-Ranee since she went missing. When he received the tip, Leigh con- tacted MBPD, which forwarded the informa- tion to the South Fulton Police Department (SFPD), which immediately began surveilling Dortch and quickly located the girl. “Once SFPD got on it, they got on it. They wasted no time,” Leigh reports. “It was a Rommel Lassiter and Leah-Ranee Rose Lassiter. night-and-day difference in the attention paid to us by Georgia police and Miami Beach police,” he adds. Last year, MBPD spokesperson Ernesto Rodriguez explained to New Times that “in- vestigators advised the missing child does not meet FDLE’s criteria for an Amber Alert and therefore one could not be finalized. We have entered the child into the database as miss- ing. As for an arrest warrant, the child’s father would first have to file an emergency injunc- tion prior to an arrest warrant being issued.” Leigh’s response at the time: “That’s what happens when Black kids go missing. We’re never alerted. That’s par for the course. [Las- siter] received that treatment because of who he is and what he looked like. That’s some- thing to be expected in South Florida, and es- pecially in Miami Beach.” Leigh says South Fulton police retrieved Leah-Ranee and arrested Dortch as a “fugi- tive from justice” on May 19, only hours after he explained the situation. Lassiter took a flight to Georgia and by midnight on May 20 he and his daughter were reunited at an SFPD police station. Leah-Ranee is now back in Miami Beach, where Lassiter is homeschooling her to make up for the six months she fell behind in her classes. He says the 5-year-old was happy to see all of her old toys, stuffed animals, and paintings still in her room exactly where she left them. “At first it was almost like she didn’t know me because she was in a traumatizing situa- tion. The only person she’d been around was her mom,” Lassiter tells New Times. “I know it’s going to be a process for her, but I’m going be there day by day with her.” tape, faucets and toilets were leaky — not great living conditions.” Dade Heritage Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving historic buildings in Mi- ami, stepped in, bankrolled by a $1 million grant from Miami-Dade County. Among its initiatives, the trust purchases and renovates “naturally-oc- curring affordable housing” — existing buildings in need of restoration in order to become habit- able — and then places a covenant on the prop- erty to lock in rental rates. “There are great older buildings in major cit- ies that provide affordability,” Rupp says. “But they’re in need of restoration and rehab to pro- vide better living conditions for the tenants.” At the Little Havana apartment building, for example, tenants were paying $800 to $1200 a month when the trust bought the building in the summer of 2020. As it prepares to begin work on restoring the fourth and final apartment, the TENANTS PAY A PALTRY $900 A MONTH EVEN AFTER THEIR LANDLORD IMPLEMENTED SWEEPING RENOVATIONS. nonprofit has announced that it will rent the units, all of which are one-bedroom apartments, for $900 a month. With the exception of one tenant who had a baby and moved to a bigger space, all of the building’s occu- pants have been able to stay in the building amid the renovations. “We really did not want to displace any- body,” Rupp says. “Because people had their routines within the neighborhood, we thought we would do the right thing and keep them in place.” Even before the pandemic and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s pitch to lure tech scenesters from New York and Silicon Valley, Miami renters were some of the most cost-burdened in the na- tion. Now, as rent spikes make headlines from Midtown to Hialeah, officials are scrambling to find space for locals who are being priced out. In 2017, the Dade Heritage Trust worked with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to place Little Havana on the latter’s list of desig- nated “national treasures.” Back then, the na- tional trust cited threats to the neighborhood caused by “development pressure, demolition of historic buildings, displacement of existing resi- dents, and zoning changes that could impact its affordability, cultural richness, and character.” Last October, Rupp says, the county set aside another $1 million for Dade Heritage Trust, with the precise terms to be ironed out in June. Meanwhile, the organization is negotiating the purchase of a few properties for similar renovation projects. [email protected] 3 3 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC |MIAMI NEW TIMES miaminewtimes.com | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | NEW TIMES MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 JUNE 2-8, 2022
