The Miami Herald’s “Animal House” series about The Club at Brickell Bay, a 643-unit tower in the heart of the financial district, got me thinking less about that one building and more about housing and affordability across Miami.
The Miami Herald’s "Animal House" series about The Club at Brickell Bay, a 643-unit tower in the heart of the financial district,
got me thinking less about that one building and more about housing and affordability across Miami.
The Herald reports that roughly 85% of the units at The Club no longer house residents. They operate as short-term rentals, turning a residential high-rise into a de-facto hotel. The disorder that follows is real and worth reading for the sheer color and “MiamiNESS” of it, but the more consequential fact is that hundreds of homes, in a single building, have been taken out of the supply available to people who live here.
It is not an isolated case. Nearby in Brickell, more than 30 families are suing their own condo board alleging it allowed illegal short-term rentals to turn their building into, as their attorney put it, “a hotel in everything but name.” Different building, same pattern: housing that has stopped being used to house residents.
That pattern sits atop an affordability crisis.
Miami is now among the least affordable rental market in the country, ranked last of 182 cities in WalletHub’s 2026 analysis, below New York and Boston. Renters here spend roughly a third of their income on housing.
The math is unforgiving. Miami’s typical wage is below the national average, yet rents claim a larger share of income than anywhere else in the country and have risen by more than 40% since early 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the line cook, the nurse and the teacher who keep this city running, the list of places they can afford keeps shrinking.
Policymakers have responded, and this November voters will weigh in on a constitutional amendment that would raise the homestead exemption to $250,000. For a homeowner, the relief can be real depending on the assessed value of their property, but in a market like ours, a single homeowners’ insurance renewal that leads to higher premiums can erase those savings. The measure does slow the rate at which tax bills climb on rental property, but that break goes to landlords and investors, not the 3 million Florida households that rent. A tax cut that rewards owners and skips renters is not an affordability strategy for the families who need one most.
Washington is circling the problem. President Trump has proposed barring large investment firms from buying single-family homes, and the White House’s latest Economic Report of the President ties affordability to a structural supply shortage. Both are serious efforts. Neither addresses how much existing housing has quietly stopped serving residents.
Over the past decade, state preemption of local rules on vacation rentals, combined with the economics of platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo, let a quiet conversion take hold. Across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, nearly 70,000 properties are listed for nightly rental, according to the short-term-rental data firm AirDNA. When an apartment can earn in a weekend or two what a long-term tenant pays in a month, the long-term market no longer makes sense. That means fewer rentals and higher rents.
The answer is not prohibition of vacation rentals; it’s too late for that. Our state legislators need to distinguish occasional, genuinely short-term use from full-time nightly operation. A state regulation limiting short-term rentals to stays of at least five to seven consecutive days would curb the constant turnover that turns residential towers into unlicensed party hotels, while leaving room for homeowners, seasonal visitors and tourism.
Residential housing must house residents first. Liberty matters, property rights matter, tourism matters and investment matters. But none of these should come at the cost of a family’s ability to live in peace in the city, neighborhood or building they already call home.
Luis Andre Gazitua is a lawyer and lobbyist registered to represent clients in Miami-Dade County, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and Greater Miami Municipalities. Gazitua authored the Miami-Dade County Strong Mayor Charter amendment approved by the voters in 2006.