Members of the Miami Local of Black Rose Anarchist Federation/Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra have been supporting the Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park residents’ struggle against CREI Holdings. In this report, they document the situation residents face, the business and political elites who are causing it, and some next steps to stop the evictions.
By Adam Weaver, Robin Young, and Juan Verala Luz
A Swelling Struggle in Suburban Sweetwater
A new fight over housing has erupted in the Miami suburb of Sweetwater, culminating in local police tackling and arresting an elderly resident leader. On November 13 thousands of residents living in the massive 900 unit Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park received a surprise notice taped to their doors, on top of garbage bins, and strewn around in dark puddles on the property, announcing they had only months until they would be displaced from their homes. Those who were aware and could understand these notices quickly spread awareness to those who didn’t or couldn’t, as soon residents will have nowhere to go.
Rental prices in Miami-Dade County have skyrocketed by 58% over the past five years and the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is now over $3,300 per month according to Rent.com. The population of the park is almost entirely multi-generational, working-class Latino immigrants, with a significant number of them being elderly and disabled residents living on fixed incomes who find the park to be one of the few affordable options left in the region.
As typical with mobile home parks, Li’l Abner residents own the units they live in and pay rent on the land they occupy, so relocation is possible but at a high cost. The notice offered residents $14,000 – or just 10% of the median home’s listing price – if they leave by January 31, which then reduces to $7,000 if they move by March 31 and finally the legal required minimum of $3,000 if they move by April 30. This notice was largely perceived to be a slap in the face by residents, giving them only 80 days to upend their entire lives, after many spent hundreds of thousands of dollars towards their homes and decades leasing in the park.
The newly formed residents’ board is demanding $50,000 to move and three to four years to do so, because otherwise, whether residents recently bought into the park or spent decades paying off a mortgage, their homes and their investments therein will be wiped away. One example reported by the Miami Herald is resident Hamilton Dos Santos who liquidated his life savings, including his 401(k), to purchase a four-bedroom unit for $160,000 only four months ago. “It’s a completely lost investment,” he says.
Who are the Chief Eviction Officers?
Eviction orders came signed by The Urban Group, a firm that specializes in helping developers displace their tenants. However, the real holder of the reins at Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park lies with CREI Holdings, owned by Miami businessman Raul F. Rodriguez. If Rodriguez gets his way, an eight-story apartment complex with 328 units known as Li’l Abner III will replace the land’s 900 mobile homes. Given that many tenants have added rooms onto their homes, such redevelopment would cut the available number of units by more than two-thirds. Despite marketing the project as “affordable and workforce housing,” only 40% of the units would be reserved for tenants who make 80% of the area median income. Meanwhile, Rodriguez lives comfortably in a 6,000 square foot, five-bedroom home in Sweetwater Estates, just two miles shy from his current tenants. His cynical cash-grab puts to shame his efforts to cultivate an image as a humanitarian community investor from humble beginnings.
Rodriguez’s father, Raul Sr., amassed a small fortune as a Cuban businessman who established the Corvet chain of appliance and television stores in Venezuela. In the mid-1960s, Raul Sr. relocated to Miami, where he built a speculative real estate empire. These investments then financed Raul Jr.’s schooling at the elite Belen Jesuit Preparatory Academy, where Raul Sr.’s and his wife Nidia’s donations were so generous that the school named its science pavilion and a multimedia center after the couple. The couple was later posthumously inducted into Belen’s Hall of Fame in 2024.
Since inheriting his family’s wealth, Raul F. Rodriguez has pursued accumulating more of it through a network of investments and business ownership. Rodriguez has swelled his coffers as a Managing Partner at Fuentes Consulting Group, a one-time investor in the regional Segafredo restaurant chains, and former proprietor of the private investment firm Agua Dulce Investments. Besides CREI Holdings, Rodriguez has shielded his property investments under numerous limited-liability corporations, including Rayni Investments and Properties (both inactive) and Luar Entertainment (inactive) and Luar Investments (currently Managing Partner). He founded and is currently President/CEO of National Health Transport, a Miami based medical transport provider.
Rodriguez has also put key politicians in his deep pockets. During Juan Carlos “JC” Bermudez’s 2022 campaign for Miami-Dade Commission District 12, which represents the City of Sweetwater, Rodriguez’s Luar Investments was reported as one of the largest contributors. Bermudez replaced José “Pepe” Díaz, who previously held the office from 2002 before terming out in 2023. Similar to Bermudez’s run, at least eight different corporate entities run by Raul Rodriguez, his family members, or close associates, contributed thousands to Díaz’s 2010 commissioner campaign. Although Díaz ran unopposed for the mayor of Sweetwater in 2023, Rodriguez donated to the campaign in similarly shady ways. Bermudez and Diaz as the respective Miami-Dade County Commissioner and Mayor of Sweetwater would be the key political stakeholders for moving forward Raul Rodriguez’s development ambitions.
Mayor Díaz claimed to be as surprised as the residents by the eviction notices, but has since been revealed to have sponsored a 2022 resolution which allocated more than half a million dollars to CREI Holdings for the Li’l Abner redevelopment project. Even more, the Miami-Dade County Board of Commissioners committed up to an additional $4,000,000 in Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant funding for the project in 2023. Despite HUD’s stated mission to expand affordable housing, Li’l Abner III will displace far more individuals than the future project will house.
Adding insult to injury, Rodriguez prides himself on his honorary service to the Sweetwater Police Department, including his volunteer membership as a member of its SWAT team. His “service” comes replete with a badge, weapon, and uniform.
Li’l Abner Residents’ Big Time Resistance
Residents of Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park have mobilized quickly against Rodriguez’s eviction orders.
Furious at facing mass displacement, they immediately began staging daily protests at the park’s street-side intersection under the slogan “Li’l Abner Se Defiende, No Se Vende” or “Protect, Don’t Sell, Li’l Abner.” The Sweetwater Police Department of only 24 sworn officers regularly sends over half its force to these protests to intimidate residents. On multiple occasions, the Sweetwater police have verbally harassed protesters, threatened them with jaywalking tickets, called towing companies to remove their vehicles, cited residents who are simply driving by to stop and share a few words of support with their neighbors, and have pushed elderly protesters to the ground. At these actions, residents have been overheard proclaiming that the situation is “worse than Cuba” and that local politicians are paid off by developers, have abandoned them, and that local police do not treat them humanely.
Residents have also taken to social media to spread awareness as to their eviction and find allies in their struggle. Throughout November, some residents believed that President Trump would heroically swoop in and stop the mass eviction. Others similarly believed that the mayor of Sweetwater would stop it once he became aware. Disillusioned by the obvious complicity of local politicians in their displacement, these residents have begun to resolve the inconsistencies in their usual politics by identifying landlords, developers, and the police as truer enemies to their livelihood than they’d previously assumed. Together with their neighbors, residents at Li’l Abner have turned to each other for a more honest dialogue that is focused on keeping everyone in their homes, as well as a strategy that fights to achieve that goal.
The campaign took a significant turn on the morning of December 4. Resident Vivian Hernández, who has played a key role in leading protests and canvassing efforts, began to vocalize the concerns of park tenants against the demolition of their mobile homes to property management when she went to drop off her rent check.
According to Hernández, management reportedly shut down the conversation about these issues before calling the Sweetwater police to the office. A viral video of the incident showed an officer slamming Hernández into the ground and roughly handcuffing the 61-year-old, five-foot-five woman, injuring her face and neck. She was immediately charged and booked with disorderly conduct, trespassing and resisting an officer.
Hernández’s arrest “definitely wasn’t an accident,” says Will Suarez, who is one of many community supporters involved in the campaign. Will previously led an effort to unionize Starbucks workers in nearby Hialeah. He described the arrest as a complete injustice which left many residents traumatized and some crying. But he also says the incident has united the residents, who have shown a great deal of bravery in the face of the Sweetwater police’s campaign of intimidation tactics.
Outraged over the arrest, over 100 residents and supporters massed outside Sweetwater City Hall later that evening to call for Vivian’s release. In response, Sweetwater police called a tow truck to impound residents’ nearby cars. Enraged residents surrounded the trucks until they left, with one resident even using his vehicle to physically block access. All the while residents chanted phrases at the police like “Justicia Para Vivían” (“Justice for Vivian”), “No al Abusó Policial” (“No police abuse”) “Vecinos Unidos Jamás Serán Vencidos” (“The Neighbors United Will Never Be Defeated”), and “Policia Singao” (a vulgar Cuban insult which is roughly equivalent to “motherf**ker” but has grown recently in political significance). The crowd closed out the evening with a one-mile candlelight march back to the mobile home park.
Next Steps: #LilAbnerLuchaSigue
The Sweetwater struggle exemplifies how suburban small business owners run their fiefdoms with political support and police suppression. Despite the odds stacked against them, Li’l Abner residents’ resistance shows us that we can fight local elites’ grips on our lives by fighting for control of where we live. Consolidating that control requires greater organization and widespread support, however.
Li’l Abner residents are currently working to revitalize the existing homeowners association for the park, which had gone defunct when the previous president passed away. Meanwhile, resident leaders have made large strides in bringing more cohesion to the residents’ demands by forming an informal “junta” (board or committee). The group hired legal representation and is asking residents to refuse any relocation offer while they collectively negotiate. So far, residents and the junta have demanded CREI Holdings allow three to four years for relocation and provide $50,000 in compensation for each unit. Other potential demands include an eviction moratorium issued by Miami-Dade County or Sweetwater officials, or negotiations to buy out CREI Holdings and establish a cooperative association of owner-residents.
Here’s how we are mobilizing to support Li’l Abner’s residents–and how you can, too:
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