Quote:
Originally Posted by d40372
After taking a second look at those pictures I took, I'd like to draw attention to a few elements I now notice in Picture #3:
- Sofas on the porches
- Bits of smashed plastic chairs on the concrete lawn (plus, an intact chair in the tree)
- And, a Mercedes parked out front
What you can't appreciate in the picture is all the roosters crowing in the neighborhood during the early morning hours. I actually to hear them...it adds a bizarre, discordant pastoral feel to the place. But, I'd imagine that those who falsely envision most of Miami as being some sort of ritzy, idyllic Shangri La might not share my sentiments.
|
I have to laugh (because it is so sad but true), many people in Miami don't have a pot to p*** in, but will drive an expensive LEASED luxury vehicle and.
To give you some perspective, according to Zillow.com, my home in a very average middle class neighborhood is now worth over $400 even though my neighborhood is looking very similar to that recently. Just after Jan 1, I called Team Metro to report that my neighborhood park (on Snapper Creek Drive off SW 72 St & 107Ave) was littered with paper bags with holes on them and it smelled HORRIBLE. I had to stop jogging and walking my dogs on that street due to the horrible smell.
When I told my neighbor, who happened to be also jogging in the neighborhood, he said the bags had dead animals in those bags since the Santeros (some weird Afro Caribbean religion commonly practiced in Miami) perform New Year's rituals with animal sacrifices and dump the dead/maimed animals there.
I was sickened, but the worst part is that it took Team Metro until just this week to clean up the disgusting mess--My outrageous $6,800 property taxes at work here. As an animal lover, and having kids who love animals and often go with me on my walks/jogs in the early evening, I was absolutely appalled at this. My 10 year old was devastated for weeks to know people were killing animals and dumping them at a park, she had nightmares for days.
So to those of you who are in DENIAL that most of Miami is a third world country, even in "middle class" neighborhoods, you need to get your head out of the sand and WAKE UP. I can only afford my $400K home with my nearly $7K taxes and $4K insurance (probably over that next year), even though I make a decent living and so does my husband.
It doesn't end there--even in my "middle class" neighborhood, the schools are disgusting, like something you only see in the movies. With every passing year the ghetto seems to be becoming more widespread and infiltrating the former middle class neighborhoods. For safety and quality reasons, I now pay $9K per year for private school tuition per child, in addition to my $6,800 property taxes, of which somewhere around 30% go to pay for our schools.