Page 26 - Habitat Container Magazine Winter Issue

Habitat Container Magazine Smart and Sustainable Habitats Winter 2017
Habitat Container Magazine November 1, 2017
Whether micro-apartments are the way to go remains to be seen. The concept seems much more of a Northern, big city phenomenon, but might work in tandem with high-speed rail, as leaders in West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami believe. Developers need to continue to step forward with fresh concepts, and cities need to continue to offer incentives for them to do so. Here’s a suggestion: Talk to Millennials, many of whom are now well into their late 20s and 30s, and find out what they really want.
8-A Great Migration From Puerto Rico Is Set to Transform Orlando
ORLANDO, Fla. — Ten intolerable days after Hurricane Maria trounced Puerto Rico, Sahria Garcia finally got a call from her brother on the island. The call lasted three minutes and the news shook her: Her family had lost everything — jobs, houses, possessions, cars — and had spent days foraging for food, ice and water.
Ms. Garcia, who lives in a small Orlando apartment with her three children, did not hesitate: “Don’t even ask,” Ms. Garcia said she told her brother during their conversation. “This is your house.”
Last week, they arrived — two brothers, their wives and their four children — and plopped onto newly bought bunk beds. The family is one small part of a sudden exodus of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans racing to Florida after Hurricane Maria, a migration so large it rivals those from New Orleans to Houston after Hurricane Katrina and from Cuba to Miami during the Mariel boatlift.
The scale is larger than any previous movement of Puerto Ricans to the mainland, including the wave that arrived after World War II, said Jorge Duany, the director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University and an expert on Puerto Rican migration. “It’s a stampede.”
More than 168,000 people have flown or sailed out of Puerto Rico to Florida since the hurricane, landing at airports in Orlando, Miami and Tampa, and the port in Fort Lauderdale. Nearly half are arriving in Orlando, where they are tapping their networks of family and friends. An additional 100,000 are booked on flights to Orlando through Dec. 31, county officials said. Large numbers are also settling in the Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas.
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With so many arriving so abruptly, the migration is expected to transform Orlando, a city that has already become a stronghold of Puerto Ricans, many of them fleeing the island’s economic crisis in recent years. The Puerto Rican population of Orlando has exploded from 479,000 in 2000 to well over one million this year, according to the Pew Research Center. The impact of this latest wave is likely to stretch from schools and housing to the work force and even politics. Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens and tilt Democratic, could sway the electoral results of one of the country’s most pivotal swing states.
Local officials and nonprofit groups are already concerned about a scarcity of affordable rental housing in the area, a longtime problem with no quick fix.
They are also worried about the eventual strain on schools, which will need more bilingual teachers to handle a large number of mostly Spanish-speaking students. The area’s two county school districts — Orange and Osceola — have taken in 3,280 new Puerto Rican students since the hurricane, 70 percent of the Florida total, according to district officials.
So far, the Orange County Public Schools district has hired 20 teachers from Puerto Rico, and 10 more are close
to being hired, said Barbara Jenkins, the superintendent. Photo
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