Protesters gathered outside Miami City Hall Tuesday morning to speak out against the city's proposed plan to build 50 to 100 tiny homes for the homeless in Virginia Key.
The plan has been put on hold for six months after pushback from the county.
On the agenda Tuesday was a discussion about the fate of the Virginia Key Outdoor Center.
Last month, city officials ordered the business to shutdown by September 13th, citing code violations and past due rent.
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"We're very suspicious that at today's hearing, the commission is attacking the Virginia Key Outdoor Center. It is a city-forced shutdown of the center which is adjacent to the spot where this camp is going to be constructed," said David Peery with the Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equity.
He showed up to protest.
Esther Alonso is the owner of the Virginia Key Outdoor Center. She has been outspoken about the city's proposal to build the homeless encampment there and says she does not think the timing is a coincidence.
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"We do have a lease dispute," said Alonso. "We've had a lease dispute for a while."
In the last year, the real estate department went completely silent.
"For months we've been trying to get something done and nothing happens," Alonso said. "Then all of a sudden I take a very vocal position against this project, along with many others, and then all of a sudden everything goes into hyperspeed and we get code violations. We get termination of our contract the day after we met with Parks and Real Estate."
Commissioner Joe Carollo said Alonso received a "politically connected sweetheart deal back in 2015" and that the lease expired two and a half years ago. He said Alonso does not have a certificate of use and owes the city $140,000.
While he was a supporter of the tiny homes plan, he says this is a completely separate issue.
"She has used this as an excuse to try and hide behind it the tiny homes," said Carollo. "I've always stated that we are looking at Virginia Key because we had no other place."
Carollo said that in the last couple of weeks the city has had conversations with the county and the Homeless Trust, where they "have reached some tentative agreements that will soon be formalized, we hope, to bring the tiny homes outside the City of Miami in unincorporated Dade County.
After hours of public comment and discussion, the commissioners voted to place the Parks and Recreation Department in charge of operations in the meantime and asked Alonso to work on getting everything in order with the city.
