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Luxury condos will replace an entire block of Coral Gables affordable apartments

A view of some of the 13 affordable, older small apartment buildings and duplexes on a Coral Gables city block that will be torn down to make way for a luxury residential development. The block is bounded by Malaga Avenue and Santander Avenue to the north and south, and Segovia Street and Hernando Street on the west and east.
Pedro Portal
/
Miami Herald
A view of some of the 13 affordable, older small apartment buildings and duplexes on a Coral Gables city block that will be torn down to make way for a luxury residential development. The block is bounded by Malaga Avenue and Santander Avenue to the north and south, and Segovia Street and Hernando Street on the west and east.

A developer of luxury townhomes, MG Developer, is buying the entire block just west of downtown Coral Gables and plans to raze all 13 buildings on it. Taking its place: Gables Village, a $50 million development where condos are sure to go for substantially more than $1 million.

That means 52 affordable, centrally located and critically needed rental apartments will disappear at a bulldozer’s stroke. Dozens of working families, including children and elderly people, will be cast out of their homes amid a housing crisis so severe neighboring Miami’s usually fractious city commission unanimously declared a public emergency in late March.

For residents on this Gables’ block, a tight-knit community of neighbors who share barbecues and look after one another’s children and pets, the prospect is worrisome, even frightening. They know rents have been climbing into the stratosphere and the supply of apartments they can afford is shrinking fast — across Miami-Dade County. Those who have begun looking for a new place say they’ve found nothing even remotely comparable in terms of price or safety in surrounding areas, much less in Coral Gables.

Read more from our news partner at The Miami Herald.

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