A man drives through a flooded parking lot to put his boat in at a ramp at the Haulover Marine Center on Nov. 14, 2016 in north Miami.
Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty

MIAMI―Myesha Pugh fled the apartment complex where she spent the first 30 years of her life after an insect wormed into her grandmother’s ear in the middle of the night. “My dad took her to the hospital, and the hospital retrieved a live cockroach,” she recounts with disgust.

Conditions at the multifamily complex in the heart of Miami’s Overtown neighborhood, where rents hovered at about $500 a month, quickly deteriorated after the original owner died and left it to her children. “I personally think they’re waiting for the city to condemn the building,” says Pugh.

Miami has a housing crisis, and Pugh is one of its victims. Soaring rents have led to a shortage of affordable housing, which in turn has led to a surge in slum conditions. For […]