Coral Gables says expansion won’t doom trailer park, but annexation anxiety persists

Coral Gables cleared a significant hurdle this month in its years-long pursuit of Little Gables, reviving anxiety over the fate of a neighborhood trailer park that is home to dozens of low-income residents — mostly seniors — who fear being priced out of Miami-Dade County amid the region’s housing squeeze.

“We don’t have anywhere else to go,” said Danny Perez, 31, who moved this year into his mom’s home at the Gables Trailer Park with his wife and two young children after losing his construction job.

In early October, the city of Coral Gables announced that it secured enough petition signatures from registered voters in Little Gables to formally pursue annexation of the 205-acre enclave, located on the border between Coral Gables and Miami. The city passed the 20% threshold by just two-dozen signatures, although it has not yet submitted them to the county elections department for review. Once that happens, the city is expected to seek county permission to hold a vote by Little Gables residents on whether they should join the “City Beautiful” — where the law bans trailer parks.

The last time the city made a concerted push to absorb the area, in 2019, Gables officials planned to demolish the trailer park to make way for redevelopment. This time around, the city has done an about-face, telling the Miami Herald that it plans to allow for the trailer park to remain by grandfathering in the use at that location — a concession that might prove crucial to finally absorbing the neighborhood.

Coral Gables officials have promised that the city will provide better services and faster emergency response times than the county, but for Gables Trailer Park residents who spoke to the Miami Herald, annexation still feels like the first step toward eviction.

Their concerns are about the fine print. They fret that becoming part of Coral Gables would increase the likelihood that the land is sold and redeveloped, and that the city’s notoriously-strict zoning code — which generally prohibits artificial turf that is visible from the street and requires special permission to paint exterior walls a color outside the city’s pre-approved palette — could bring fines for code violations that residents or the trailer park owners can’t afford to fix.

Those possibilities are cause for concern for Perez, who said many Miami-area landlords have refused to rent his family of four anything smaller than a two-bedroom apartment, which costs about $2,063 per month in Miami-Dade County, according to data from Apartment List.

“The low-income families,” he said, “people like my mom, who are the backbone of Florida — they’re getting pushed out.”

“You lost me”

Residents opposed to annexation have accused the city of a money grab. Recent projections from the city estimate that, within five years of annexation, it could generate $4 million in revenue from Little Gables through property taxes, sales tax and fees for city services.

The city’s efforts toward annexation this year, which also included a failed attempt to annex the High Pines and Ponce Davis neighborhoods, have cost roughly $144,000 for engineering, legal work and marketing, according to City Spokeswoman Martha Pantin.

When Coral Gables last went before the county for Little Gables annexation in 2019, commissioners rejected the city’s application for an annexation referendum, citing the expected displacement of trailer park residents. “When you’re telling me you’re displacing the people of most need in our community, you lost me,” then-Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz said at a 2019 committee meeting.

Today, conversations are already happening with county officials. Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago has met privately with County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera, whose district includes Little Gables, and with Commissioner Raquel Regalado, whose district includes High Pinces and Ponce Davis, to discuss annexation, according to Pantin.

In an interview, Cabrera said Lago has assured him the city will let the trailer park be. “I think it’s sort of a hypothetical that Coral Gables is going to go in there and target them,” said Cabrera.

“Yes, there are things in there that should probably be brought up to code,” he added, “but I think if we’re going to do that, that we should do that in a way that’s humane. Our goal should never be to go in and fine people until they don’t have an ability to afford where they live.”

The city’s regulations remain a concern for Yesenia Arocha, a Legal Services of Greater Miami lawyer who represents Gables Trailer Park residents.

“Maybe they’re not facing the issue of having their trailer park moved or closed down, but what about all the other zoning laws that apply to them?” Arocha said. She added that the burden to remedy fire hazard issues, for example, can become the responsibility of the individual trailer owner if the issue is with their specific trailer. The owner of the trailer park can then evict the individual owner if they’re unable to remedy the issue, Arocha said.

The code’s strictness isn’t the only factor at play, said former Democratic state Rep. Joe Geller, the village attorney of El Portal eight years ago when Little Farm trailer park residents were forced out to make way for new development.

“Typically the county is stretched pretty thin, and it may not have the resources to be as aggressive, whereas cities — they tend to have more resources.” Geller said. “It’s not just what the code is, it’s how many sets of eyes are on it.”

If annexation is approved, the city plans to allocate three dedicated police officers to Little Gables, and a non-sworn safety aide to patrol the area.

In addition to its approximately 200 sworn police officers citywide, Coral Gables also has 13 code enforcement officer positions and two field supervisors, Pantin said.

Lago said he doesn’t know of any current violations in the trailer park, given that it lies outside city jurisdiction, but that all building structures in Florida need to meet the state’s building code. He says he is ”optimistic” that the county will green light the referendum.

“The safety of our residents will always be our number one priority,” Lago wrote in an email.

“If and when”

Geller, who is running for an open seat on the county school board, said trailer parks remain “prime targets” for developers in Miami-Dade County due to the potential to clear the land of mobile homes and build multi-story, high-density buildings. Dozens of trailer parks across the state have been closed down over the last decade amid Florida’s real estate boom.

“I think there are probably developers looking into trailer parks wherever they exist — annexed or not,” said Geller.

Several trailer park residents who spoke to the Herald said the owners of Titan Development, the developer that controls the property, had promised they wouldn’t sell the land if annexed. But it’s not clear that that’s the case anymore.

Ana Ventura, who is listed as an authorized representative for Titan Development Partners LLC in state business filings, and whose husband Jesus “Jay” Suarez is the owner, said in an email that it’s likely that the owners will eventually “prefer other types of land use” for the site.

“If and when the land must be reused,” Ventura said, “I know the rightful owners of living space will be given rightful opportunities.”

Fueling distrust among residents, the mayor’s brother, land-use attorney Carlos Lago, was until recently registered in the city of Miami to lobby for Titan Development Partners.

Rumors that the Lagos would benefit from annexation grew so loud last year that the mayor signed a sworn affidavit at a City Commission meeting proclaiming neither he nor any of his immediate family members had a business interest in annexing Little Gables.

A representative at Greenberg Traurig, where Carlos Lago is a shareholder, said in an email that the mayor’s brother only represented Titan in connection with the transfer of development rights for a historic building in downtown Miami many years ago. Once Titan sold the property in November of 2015, the firm said, his registration with Titan became “effectively inoperative,” though he did not withdraw his lobbyist registration for Titan until this March, city records show.

“I have not represented Titan Development in any capacity or done any legal work for the company since prior to the date that the Downtown Miami property was sold,” Carlos Lago said in a statement.

That’s also corroborated by a newly-released report from the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics & Public Trust, which determined that Carlos Lago did not have an ongoing or active relationship with Titan, and that Vince Lago did not “knowingly make a false statement” when he signed the affidavit.

“We’re going to fight”

Coral Gables’ outreach efforts have included community meetings last month for residents in the affected neighborhoods.

The meeting for High Pines and Ponce Davis residents became heated, with one person telling the city to “leave us alone,” and another describing the city’s petitioning efforts as “harassment.”

The Little Gables meeting drew more measured responses, but it wasn’t necessarily informative for all attendees.

Barbara Perez, who has lived in the Gables Trailer Park for the past seven years, was in the audience. But the entire meeting was conducted in English, while Perez’s primary language is Spanish — like many residents in the park.

Perez, 68, is retired and living on a fixed income. She pays $650 per month, plus utilities, to rent the plot of land where her trailer home sits — a price that’s nearly impossible to find in Miami-Dade County, where the median cost for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,621. She worries about what annexation could mean for the trailer park’s future.

“Where are we going to go?” she said. “What about the elderly? Don’t they have rights, too?”

Danny Perez, the construction worker who lives at the park with his mother, wife and young kids, ages 3 and 4, is considering moving his family up to North Carolina in the near future, where housing is more affordable.

“What this trailer park needs is a voice,” he added.

Danny Perez is not related to Barbara Perez. She said she plans to stay: “We’re going to fight,” she said.

Miami Herald staff writer Rebecca San Juan contributed reporting.