| RIPTIDE | ▼ LIBERTY CITY HOME SWEET HOME cycle of homelessness for 14 years. After a stint in the state prison system, Jenkins is one of two residents so far living at the Housing and Healing Justice Corps, a new affordable housing cooperative formed by two nonprofit groups — Struggle for Miami’s Affordable and Sustainable Housing (SMASH) and Women with Broken Heals. “This is the first time in nearly two de- A cades that Angela has stable housing and is living in a good situation,” says Trenise Bry- ant, founder of Women with Broken Heals. The five-bedroom home in Liberty City serves as transitional housing for Miamians struggling to find a place to live amid rising rent prices. The house includes a garden, conference room, and an office space for the tenants. SMASH leased the house in the spring until it purchased the property with a $465,000 loan from Right to the City, a na- tional alliance of community-based organiza- tions fighting for housing justice. “The affordable housing cooperative is a place for the community to have affordable housing, but also to build power for housing justice in Miami,” says Adrian Madriz, exec- utive director of SMASH. “This is an oppor- tunity to take land out of the speculative market, put it in the community’s control, and make sure it is always an institution GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS ▼ FLORIDA TOOK LONG ENOUGH ignated commercial cannabis license that will open the door to the state’s billion-dollar medi- cal marijuana industry. On September 20, the Florida Department of A 44 Health announced that it intends to give Donell Gwinn the license, which has been set aside for a Black farmer applicant since 2017. For more than two decades, Gwinn has oper- ated Gwinn Brothers Farm alongside his broth- ers Robert and Clifford near the community of McAlpin in Suwannee County. The siblings raised cattle and grew peanuts, iron clay peas, water- melon, and hay on their 1,100-acre property. Gwinn stands to become the 23rd commer- FLORIDA FINALLY GRANTS COMMERCIAL POT LICENSE TO A BLACK FARMER. BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN fter years of delays, Florida has com- pleted the application process for Black farmers vying for a specially des- A NEW AFFORDABLE HOUSING COOPERATIVE OPENS IN LIBERTY CITY. BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN ngela Jenkins, a single mother from Georgia, moved to Flor- ida seeking a better life for herself and her children. In- stead, she found herself in a neighborhoods now pricing people out, a sur- vey by Public Land for Public Good Miami found the county will need to offer at least 210,000 units of affordable housing to avoid a housing shortage. Madriz says SMASH hopes to turn the house into a limited equity co-op, where the tenants are able to purchase a share of the property and build equity on it. SMASH, whose members primarily live in Little Havana, Overtown, Little Haiti, and Liberty City, is planning to offer similar THE FIVE- BEDROOM HOME SERVES AS TRANSITIONAL HOUSING FOR MIAMIANS STRUGGLING TO FIND A PLACE TO LIVE. affordable housing cooperatives in every county commission district. “Rent is just too damn high,” Madriz says. “This is going to be the first of many housing and healing justice cooperatives so we can achieve housing as a human right in Miami. Local homelessness activist David Peery Photo by Naomi Feinstein The Housing and Healing Justice Corps is a new affordable housing co-op in Liberty City. working permanently for housing and heal- ing justice.” Each tenant must go through an applica- tion process to live in this one-of-a-kind co- operative in Miami-Dade County. Once they are approved, they are only responsible for paying the monthly rent of $700, which in- cludes water, electricity, cable, and internet. SMASH expects each tenant to stay for about a year, though they can live there as long as they need to get back on their feet. The tenants are obligated to go out into the community to advocate for housing justice. They also have the opportunity to collaborate with Women with Broken Heals to work through past trauma. “Transformative justice is definitely needed here [in Liberty City],” Bryant adds. Kelli Ann Thomas, a community council member of South Dade, says this is a signifi- cant moment for those who are unable to keep up with rent increases, especially Black women who are disproportionately affected by the nation’s housing policies. By early 2022, rent in Miami had increased by 57 percent year-over-year, according to a data from Realtor.com. With increased in- vestment and gentrification of low-income argues this initiative will help level the play- ing field between owners and renters and guarantee better tenant protections. He says more government regulation is needed to al- leviate the current housing crisis and stem the tide of landlords pushing out tenants. “The power differential between tenants and landlords is huge,” Peery says. “You have all of this outside money coming in, and all these sellers who are dictating all of the terms, and they are pricing out the common individual. That’s why we need cooperatives like this. We have the power of the commu- nity to surmount that challenge.” SMASH is fundraising to pay back the loan by Nov. 1, so it can readily purchase more property and form another affordable hous- ing cooperative. cial cannabis license holder in Florida. Many of the 22 current license holders are multi-state marijuana companies, publicly traded and val- ued at billions of dollars. The North Florida farmer beat out 11 other ap- plicants for the Black farmer license. “Mr. Gwinn is very pleased that his applica- tion was selected for licensure and is grateful for the hard work by the Florida Department of Health, Office of Medical Marijuana Use, to com- plete the review of the applications received,” said Gwinn’s attorney, Jim McKee, in a statement to the News Service of Florida. The special license was set up in 2017 when the Florida legislature wrote regulations for the state’s fledgling cannabis industry after voters legalized medical marijuana. The regulations mandated that the license be granted to a Black farmer who was a member of the class of plaintiffs tied to the 1997 litigation known as Pigford v. Glickman. In the landmark case, thousands of Black farmers successfully sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the grounds it had discriminated against them in the allocation of loans. Last year, the application fee for the Pigford li- cense was raised to $146,000, far more than the $60,000 fee paid in the past to apply for a stan- dard commercial cannabis license. The move prompted outcry from Florida Agriculture Com- missioner Nikki Fried, who criticized the years- long delay in issuing the Pigford license and called the state’s medical marijuana licensing process “unacceptable and discriminatory on its face.” On top of expensive application fees, Florida cannabis companies are responsible for all stages of business from cultivation to distribu- tion, as the state has a strict, vertically-inte- grated model for the industry. All of these requirements have made it nearly impossible for small businesses without large financial backing to enter the medicinal marijuana market. The Florida Department of Health has justified the delay in issuing commercial cannabis licenses, including the Pigford license, by pointing to lengthy litigation that challenged its licensing system. The legal quagmire appeared to have been resolved, at least in part, when the Florida Su- preme Court upheld the licensing system in a May 2021 ruling. Still, the health department has remained far behind on its quota, which requires it to issue four standard licenses for every 100,000 new medical marijuana patients in the state. The licenses are considered “golden tickets” to the Sunshine State medical marijuana market and are constantly changing hands to the tune of millions of dollars. Recently, nationwide can- nabis operator MedMen sold its license, cultiva- tion-and-processing facilities, and 14 dispensaries to Fort Lauderdale-based Green Sentry Holdings for $63 million. As of September 16, there were more than 751,000 medical marijuana patients registered in Florida. Annual cannabis sales in the state could reach $1.5 billion this year, according to esti- mates from MJBiz Factbook. [email protected] SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 5, 2022 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS |
