From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Shantytown U.S.A.

Liberty City's embattled Umoja Village gives hope and shelter to the homeless.

by Bob Weinberg

January 3 2007

On the southwest edge of a scrubby, rocky-terrained lot in Miami's Liberty City, the last shack is going up, effectively filling the shantytown to capacity on this bright, breezy day in early December. Hammers crack in the background as Elbert, or "El," a lanky, dreadlocked native of St. Thomas, idly rolls red grapes between his long, slender fingers, occasionally popping one into his mouth as he patiently waits for his new home to be erected.

"Excuse me," a white-haired gentleman with a mustache says softly, hobbling into the camp with the assistance of a cane. "I live in the neighborhood, and I'm starving. Can someone make me a sandwich?"

In his singsong accent, El explains that everyone makes his own food here but that the newcomer is welcome to help himself. (Like most of the people interviewed for this story, El did not want to disclose his last name.) The Virgin Islander points him in the direction of the camp's pantry and kitchen area, and the old man shuffles off to fix himself some grub.

Construction, El says, is not his strong suit -- he was in the security field before hitting hard times a few years ago -- so he lets the people with the know-how put up his so-called "pallet palace," a surprisingly sturdy structure composed of wooden pallets and cardboard held together with nails, aluminum cans and ingenuity. El's future roommate, a portly man called Junior with sparse, graying hair and beard, also hails from the Virgin Islands, albeit from St. Croix. Back home, El explains, the men would probably be at each other's throats. But here in the shantytown -- dubbed Umoja Village, which takes its name from the Swahili word for unity -- a unique kind of fellowship seems to hold sway, uniting disadvantaged people in a way not often seen in city-run shelters.

A bold social experiment, the village currently houses 40 residents, including a few couples, one of which is expecting a baby. Each individual residence bears a prominent black leader's name, voted on by the camp's residents and posted on a hand-painted sign: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Marcus Garvey and even Tupac Shakur's godmother, Asatta, a former Black Panther who fled to Cuba.

The shantytown began taking shape in late October when Center for Pan-African Development activist and advocate Max Rameau started putting up the shacks on a vacant lot in the heart of the historic black neighborhood. Time and again, the city had reneged on promises to provide much-needed low-income housing here. Taking advantage of the Pottinger settlement, a law that prevents the city from interfering with legal, day-to-day activities of homeless people, Rameau soon began attracting people from communities huddled under nearby highway bridges and individuals who had been sleeping beneath bushes and in the alleys of South Beach. Local clergy and volunteers from as far away as Port St. Lucie also heard his hammer. They have lent material and political support, which Rameau and the Take Back the Land organization he formed will desperately need when the Miami City Commission votes later this month on whether Pottinger applies to this particular plot of land.

"Rachel!" yells Steve, a burly, bearded Indian River Community College student and volunteer from the Port St. Lucie-based Project Awareness group as he tries to make himself heard over the steady din of hammers. "How did we first find out about this?"

"We got it from the Internet," replies the shorthaired brunette, who is a student at Florida Atlantic University, as she peers over the edge of the roof of what will be El and Junior's living quarters. "One of our friends e-mailed us."

The Project Awareness volunteers visit the village every two weeks, bringing donations and supplies. Depending on the traffic, Steve estimates the trip takes about two hours, a little longer today because they stopped in Lake Worth to pick up a few others. "Whoever wants to come lets us know, and we all meet at the local coffee shop and head on down," he says.

At the moment, Steve is cutting the sleeves of a red, cable-knit sweater into squares.

"I've got plenty of corners when you need 'em," he calls up to Rachel, explaining to a visitor how the cloth wedges provide buffers between the blue plastic tarps that serve as roofing and the rough ends of the wooden pallets to which they're fastened. Over the month that they've been helping out, the volunteers have become increasingly proficient.

"Well, we don't have to be told where to go as much," Steve relates. "We just figure whatever looks like it needs doing, we just do it."

Flower power

"I wanted to be down here working on this because it's a really beautiful thing," says a volunteer and part-time resident from Lake Worth who goes by the name of Waffle. "I also wasn't in a position to rent, so it worked out as far as my housing, too." In addition to his work at Umoja, Waffle has participated in guerrilla projects such as planting a strip of sunflowers on a city-owned lot in Wellington, for which he amassed public support and was eventually awarded a $3,000 grant.

"The city was pretty cool," says Waffle's friend, a fair-haired young man with double lip-piercings and amber-tinted eyeglasses. "I think maybe it's hard to fight flowers."

The fight for humans, however, continues to be an ongoing battle. Seated on one of the couches arranged in a ring that serves as a makeshift meeting space, the blond, blue-eyed Waffle affectionately ruffles his companion's arm hair. In the care of the men, a beautiful little girl named Julia smiles shyly and holds up three fingers when asked her age, playfully fitting a half a coconut over her kneecap before presenting it to a visitor.

"I'm splitting my time between here and my friendships and my family [in Lake Worth]," Waffle continues. "I'm not working on any other amazing project up there or instigating new projects or resurrecting old ones. But I'm trying to get on Tri-Rail to see my mom; she's sick."

Born and raised in Lake Worth, Waffle has been making the 60-mile trek to the village practically since it went up. At this point, he says, he has never spent more than three days in a row here, but he continues to return to what he sees as a unique communal experience. Unlike the other squatters' camps he has visited in other parts of the country, Umoja operates out in the open, not hidden away from neighbors.

"For me, yesterday was so beautiful," he relates. "I was working on some project, and I'm over here, and everyone who lives here built this house for two people who came in two days ago; it was this total community barn-raising."

Jonathan Baker, 33, amens Waffle's sentiments. The tall, whip-thin former martial arts instructor seasons a large steak sizzling in a cast-iron skillet, while a ropy, bearded and heavily tattooed man named Robert tends to a couple of eggs also frying in a pan on the metal-drum grill.

"My ex-wife had a crack problem," says Baker, who came to Florida from Michigan about three or four years ago. "She used to refinance houses. So I was used to being financially secure, and everything was paid for. Then, when it went south real bad, instead of killing her, I just decided to jump on the road and start over somewhere else. But when I got down here and started going through all the corruption that was in the homeless centers, I was just like, 'I'll take my chances out on the street.' "

One harrowing experience involved a shelter staff member's pulling a knife on Baker. The police, he says, sided with the staff member, and Baker was ultimately blamed for the fracas. Another time, in another shelter, all his clothing was stolen. It was that incident, he says, that convinced him to move into the village.

"I came over here and had the second place built, and I've basically been here ever since," he says. "Because it actually is, if it's taken into the stronger context, a place where you can actually make some life-improving steps. You have facilities; you have food. The only thing you have to come up with is job transportation and then sticking to it. It doesn't matter if you work at McDonald's. It doesn't matter if you change tires or walk around picking up trash on Miami Beach or even collecting cans or scrap metal. Having a place to live, having a place to cook your food, having a community of social people around you -- that is not a privilege, that is a right, OK?"

Attired in an open track jacket that reveals his bare chest and stylish, wraparound shades that hug his clean-shaven head, Baker seems quite comfortable, his Michigan-conditioned blood inuring him to Florida's idea of winter weather. Although the temperature has dipped on a few nights and blankets are always a welcome commodity, it's still better to be living outdoors here than just about anywhere else.

"As long as a hurricane doesn't come through, we're cool," Baker says. "And somebody even asked me, too, 'What if one does?' Well, we'll be out rebuilding again."

Like a good neighbor

Sporting a black heart tattoo under her right eye and short dreadlocks, Jeanila seems to relish arguing with El. A resident of the apartment building abutting the southeast corner of the village, the 22-year-old National School of Technology student smiles broadly as she mixes it up with her contrary fellow St. Thomas native, who tells her that she's becoming "Americanized" because she has no accent.

"We're Americans anyway," she retorts.

"No, no, no, no," he insists. "American means being born in this [continent]. Mexicans are Americans. [People] born in Central or South America are Americans. I wasn't born on the continent; I was born on an island. So I'm a West Indian."

"South Beach is an island," she replies, cracking up.

And so it goes for a few minutes, as the comedy routine unfolds. The pleasure the pair derive from their playfully contentious dialogue is unmistakable.

Curious about the village that sprang up quite literally in her back yard, Jeanila began helping out at the camp and visiting with the residents, some of whom she befriended. "A lot of them are really cool," she says. "They just need a bit of motivation."

Coming from a troubled home life that regularly required dealings with the Department of Children and Families, Jeanila empathizes with the residents, fully realizing how overwhelming poverty can be. Remarkably, she has turned her life around after a rough start, though she realizes not everyone is so fortunate.

"I was kind of a badass," she admits. "But you grow up, you evolve into other things."

Now, she's living on her own, working and studying to be a medical assistant. She says it's important for school-age kids to witness this life, perhaps to volunteer their time, because at any time, they could find themselves in similar straits. When someone suggests that family can insulate some people from this type of situation, she demurs.

"I don't have any family helping me out, but I'm doing fine," she declares. "And I just turned 22 this year, and it's more difficult for me because I'm in the phase of, 'Who the fuck am I? What do I want to do?' "

"Where your people at?" El asks.

"I don't know," she replies. "I ain't calling them. I closed that chapter in my life already."

Watering the garden

"You gotta climb up there and pour the water in there," Rameau says, indicating the plastic jug atop the makeshift shower, a structure consisting of corrugated plastic walls and terra cotta tiles, as he leads a visitor on a tour of the camp. "You just turn the little black knob and let gravity do its job."

The runoff from the shower, which is elevated, travels through a pipe that leads to a small garden that will eventually produce tomatoes, greens and tea. "So if you take a shower," Rameau explains, "you also water the garden."

The idea, he continues, is for the village eventually to become self-sustaining, also meaning that he and the other volunteers will step aside and let the residents take charge. But right now, like the produce growing in the garden, that ideal is just a tender sprout requiring much nurturing.

Among the elements threatening the future of Umoja Village are the Miami city commissioners, whose vote later this month will cement the fate of the camp. City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones, who is black and whose district encompasses Liberty City, has led the charge against Umoja, claiming she has fielded complaints from people in the neighborhood who fear for their children's safety. Nonsense, Rameau says.

"Everybody knows she's lying," he declares. "She says we're shitting on the ground, and she's never even been out here. The neighbors send their children out here to get snacks and to play. They spend a good chunk of time here on Saturdays. Neighbors on both sides come out. They cook for us; they eat with us."

At Spence-Jones' urging, the commission convened to declare an "emergency ordinance" that would redefine what is considered "exempt public land" under Pottinger. By a 3-2 vote, the commissioners passed the ordinance in mid-December, which would require the villagers, or anyone else, to obtain a permit to gather on government-owned land. However, the commission must vote again later this month to finalize the decision. Spence-Jones did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

"It's double-fisted," Rameau says of the city's attack on the village. "First, they're reconfiguring what is considered public land. Then, they're redefining what constitutes free speech and the right to assemble. The city attorney conceded [the legality of Pottinger], so they must change the law. I guess I was right about them being after us."

When Rameau first began putting up the shanties in October, he made sure to arm himself with a copy of Pottinger, a landmark 1998 court settlement that stipulated the city of Miami could not interfere with homeless people's engaging in "life-sustaining conduct," which included the building of temporary structures -- that is, ones without poured-concrete foundations. When the police inevitably arrived, he merely presented them with the document.

"And part of the order was that the cops were supposed to all have been trained on it," Rameau says. "So, needless to say, none of the cops had heard of it. But to their credit, they called the city attorney before they did any arrests."

Now, he envisions SWAT teams and bulldozers, should the commissioners, who he says are in the pockets of developers, have their way. Still, Rameau believes the village will be there at least through the Super Bowl.

"They're trying to lay the groundwork for a raid," he predicts. "They're going to say they found drugs."

Gentrification, says the Haitian-born, Washington, D.C.-raised Rameau, has wreaked dramatic changes in many traditionally black South Florida neighborhoods. Overtown, the black Grove, Liberty City and his beloved Little Haiti, where he lived until recently being priced out, have all seen either commercial or residential gentrification that has radically altered the racial landscape.

Another casualty of gentrification has been low-income housing. Ongoing scandals in the city of Miami have exposed tremendous waste and fraud on the part of Miami-Dade Housing Agency officials such as then-Director Rene Rodriguez and developer Raul Masvidal. The Miami Herald revealed that an audit found Masvidal had used public funds to make a $355,000 payment on a personal home loan and to pay a childhood friend nearly $287,000 for a sculpture of stacked teacups. For his part, Rodriguez allegedly took kickbacks from developers and oversaw the funding of a new $5 million headquarters in South Miami, using money that had been earmarked to build housing for the poor.

Rameau says the scandals have significantly raised the visibility of the housing crisis. While he's disgusted with such goings-on, he says they didn't provide the impetus for his picking up a hammer and making full use of the rights granted by Pottinger.

"We had solid legal ground," he iterates, "but most of us feel the ideals that we're going after are high enough that whether it's legal or illegal, there's still a need for it, there's still a moral imperative for it. It's a first step."

Umoja Village is located on the northeast corner of Northwest 62nd Street and Northwest 17th Avenue in Miami's Liberty City. For more information or to make a donation, visit Takebacktheland.blogspot.com.