Phil Levine’s consultant pushes marina at Rebecca Towers

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Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine was at Rebecca Towers last week, courting the elderly Hispanic voters that helped propel him to victory two years ago. He also took his whole slate of candidates — Ricky Arriola, John Elizabeth Aleman and Betsy Perez — who he wants elected so they can rubber stamp his decisions.

But what he didn’t tell the group of viejitos assembled is that his campaign manager and political consultant, David Custin — who is also the campaign consultant for his three commission candidates — has big plans for their home. Custin is getting paid $10,000 a month to turn the low-income senior subsidized housing community into a luxury marina with condos and maybe a hotel or a nightclub or something.

That’s $10,000 a month since February.

Custin — who is suddenly raking it in on the Beach (more on that later) — is the registered lobbyist for TC Miami Beach Marina, LLC, for the “redevelopment of property and city approval for Miami Beach Marina and Rebecca Towers,” according to forms he filled out with the city.

But, um, wait a minute. Is Rebecca Towers up for grabs? Apparently so. Nevermind that people live there. They will soon move due to increasing rents that many cannot afford while public officials say that the beach has a surplus of public housing and doesn’t need so much.

Is it a coincidence that the rents are going up right when the mayor’s boy wants to force the residents out? Ah, Ladra thinks not.

Rebecca Towers is two buildings with 400 units for Section 8 residents. At capacity, the towers house nearly 500 people. It was built in 1975 (South) and 1979 (North) and is operated with federal housing dollars.

But it is a unique public housing complex in that it is waterfront, at 150 and 200 Alton Road, on a sliver of South Beach that has really blossomed over the past decade. The property is likely worth somewhere around $75 million, maybe even $100 million. Maybe more. And there could be an argument for selling the land or entering into a public private partnership to redevelop it and build housing elsewhere.

But there is already a quiet, nervous murmuring among the residents at Rebecca Towers about how long they’ll be able to stay there and whether or not they’re going to be pushed out. Commissioner Deede Weithorn is concerned enough to be meeting this week with Miami-Dade Commission Bruno Barreiro about it.

“I’m worried about the seniors being displaced,” Weithorn told Ladra. “Even if we did build something wonderful and amazing for them, where are they going to go in the meantime? These are elderly people who are not easily transportable. Even if it’s better in the long run, I wonder what their day-to-day lives are going to be like.”

For Ladra, it seems rather sneaky that the mayor says nothing about these grand plans while he performs for these people’s votes all while his political handler profits off this developing inside, unsolicited deal.

Also, sources tell me that this all comes after Levine pressured the ousting of several directors of the Miami Beach Development Corporation, beginning a month after the mayor was first elected after an alleged city review found supposed “fiscal and operational discrepancies” — including $300,000 in double billing related to a different affordable housing development. I use “alleged” and “supposed” because there haven’t been any arrests or indictments in almost two years.

The mayor solely appoints the board now, like he does with all committees, Ladra is told, and he’s stacked this one with cronies. The MBDC is a quasi public agency that makes the decisions for public housing on the beach — what to build, where to build it, what rents to charge.

Some fear that the raising rents are a coordinated effort to push the low-income viejitos out of not just Rebecca Towers but all of Miami Beach, so that there is no “unmet need” for housing and, in fact, a surplus. Hmmm… wanna bet on which housing complex goes down first?

The word about the big plans for Rebecca Towers got out last week and already Steve Cody has made another video of it — this time, adding one in Spanish for the benefit of most of the people who live in Rebecca Towers. “Phil Levine wants to give Rebecca Towers to the rich,” is the title of the video, which urges people not to vote for the three candidates on the slate.

“Vote like your whole world depends on it,” the video ends. Because for many people, it does.

  David Custin, Philip Levine