Paradise lost? South Florida moves to tipping point

Published January 1, 2006

From her seat behind the rental counter at the U-Haul Center on State Road 84 near Interstate 95 in Fort Lauderdale, Belkis Lopez has noticed a shift in the past year.

More trucks are leaving town than arriving.

"A lot of people are getting out of here," Lopez said. "Working people who say they can't afford living here, people who've been here 50 years, retirees who say their money can go a lot further up north."

Some go as close as Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie. Many have been going to Pensacola and Tallahassee. Some go to Georgia, North Carolina and beyond.

She rattled off the list of one-way rental destinations for the past week: Ohio, Las Vegas, two in North Florida.

"I hear the same complaints [about South Florida] all the time," said Lopez, 23, who has worked at the U-Haul Center for two years. "Too expensive, too crowded, too much traffic."

It's a new year in South Florida, and there seems to be a new vibe, too.

Not too long ago, this area seemed like paradise: great weather and a relatively affordable lifestyle, with housing that seemed a steal compared with other major metropolitan areas.

But now paradise has been lost, what with hurricanes every other week, a real estate market that only a Wall Street millionaire could afford, the cost of everything from health care to FPL bills soaring and salaries not keeping pace.

During the past few months, since Hurricane Wilma, almost every interview and casual conversation I've had with ordinary people inevitably drifts to thoughts of leaving.

"I'm seriously thinking about getting out of the area," Linda Mastriana, 57, said a few days after Wilma. She has lived and worked in Fort Lauderdale for 28 years, but she said the coming increase in windstorm insurance rates might be her breaking point.

"The cost of living is just getting out of hand, and the wages are simply not keeping up," Mastriana said. She said her native Ohio keeps looking better, winters and all.

South Florida has always been a transient area. But now it's also longtime residents, people who thought they were going to be lifers, who are pulling up stakes.

People like Martha Norona. Norona's family moved to South Florida from Massachusetts in 1957, when she was 4. In August, one week before Hurricane Katrina hit, Norona sold her house in Dania Beach and moved to Tallahassee.

Norona, 52, moved to be near her two grandchildren and daughter, who works at Florida State University, but also for a less hectic lifestyle.

"I knew things were expensive [in South Florida], but I didn't realize how expensive until I got here," she said. "I only need one insurance policy for my home now. It's wonderful."

In South Florida, she paid more than $2,000 a year for homeowner's, flood and windstorm insurance, another $2,000 in property taxes and $159 a month for auto insurance. In Tallahassee, she pays $800 a year for property insurance, $1,200 in property taxes and $88 a month for auto insurance.

She sold her South Florida house, a small two-bedroom, for $325,000. In Tallahassee, she bought a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home with a fireplace, wooden deck and two-car garage for $180,000. She had plenty left over to buy a winter wardrobe.

"I paid off everything I owed, put money in the bank, bought a beautiful house and can afford to work part-time," she said. "I don't regret it for a minute. I miss my friends and my family, but to me it's like heaven up here. … Everyone's in a good mood. Even the stock boys at Wal-Mart say hello to you. People don't cut you off in traffic. If you put your blinker on, they actually let you in."

Government planners and private builders still forecast unbridled growth for Broward, with no shortage of high-end developments and high-rise condominiums on the drawing boards. But you wonder, who'll be able to afford it?

The big question for the new year and beyond: Can South Florida's middle class hold? Or will more people cash out, pack up and escape from a lost paradise?

Michael Mayo can be reached at mmayo@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4508.



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