'I Am Little Haiti' exhibition documents battle with gentrification and climate change

A vibrant immigrant neighborhood is facing change and disruption amid a phenomenon known as “climate gentrification.” An exhibition in Miami is documenting Little Haiti’s resilience. Jeffrey Brown visited for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

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Amna Nawaz: A vibrant immigrant neighborhood is facing change and disruption amid a phenomenon known as climate gentrification.

Now a Miami exhibition seeks to document that community’s resilience.

Jeffrey Brown visited for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Carl-Philippe Juste, Co-Curator, I Am Little Haiti: I always say, Little Haiti is a gift that we give to Miami-Dade and to Florida itself or to the world.

Jeffrey Brown: It was a celebration of a neighborhood, an exhibition of art created by those who know and love it, and also fear for its future.

Carl-Philippe Juste, an award-winning photojournalist with The Miami Herald, is co-curator of I Am Little Haiti.

Carl-Philippe Juste: Trying to define Little Haiti from different vantage points, from those who left, those who stayed, those who were Haitian, those who migrated to the area, but all of us, all who fall in love with Little Haiti.

Jeffrey Brown: Now at Miami’s Green Space, a community art center, the exhibition organized with Florida International University offers different views into the life of Little Haiti, the neighborhood home to Haitian Americans and other Caribbean communities, paintings.

Woman: Little Haiti for me is my home.

Jeffrey Brown: A documentary, everyday objects, and photographs, including several by Juste, such as this of Father Reginald Jean-Mary of the Notre Dame D’Haiti Catholic Church.

Carl-Philippe Juste: It’s the soul of the Haiti. It’s a place where you can go laugh, cry, sing, see friends. For me, it’s a place I remember.

Jeffrey Brown: Juste and his family are part of this history. His father, Viter, is credited with coining the name Little Haiti after moving his family from Brooklyn, New York, to Miami in 1973 and persuading other Haitians to settle here.

By 2000, nearly 100,000 Haitians lived in Miami-Dade County. And many signs of this home away from a troubled homeland remain, murals, businesses and restaurants, the people themselves.

Carl-Philippe Juste: My father did not coin Little Haiti because he wanted it for Haitians only. He wanted Little Haiti because he wanted to say, we’re here, thank you, and we’re not going anywhere.

Jeffrey Brown: But, today, some are having to go elsewhere, as the neighborhood sees rapid change and outside investment driving up the cost of living.

A major factor, Little Haiti’s relatively higher elevation at 10 feet above sea level and away from Miami’s famed coastline makes it more attractive as seas rise and increasingly threaten much of this area. That’s made Little Haiti a victim of so-called climate gentrification.

Carl-Philippe Juste: You have developers coming in. You have LLCs becoming homebuyers.

It changes the sound of the neighborhood. Many could not stay because just the economic pressure renting space or even owning a home. So I wanted to look at Little Haiti from those vantage points to place in a way of declaration, of ownership.

Jeffrey Brown: Just 26 percent of residents in Little Haiti own their homes. Those who have been here for decades have seen property values increase significantly.

In April 2012, the average cost of a home was around $58,000. This year, it’s over half-a-million. That’s part of the I Am Little Haiti exhibition too.

Carl-Philippe Juste: I think it was really important that this is not a sugarcoating, a fairy tale. This is a community that’s fighting for its life.

Dudley Alexis, Visual Artist: All it is used to be Haitian businesses. And when you’re entering, you see the Haitian flag, the colors.

Jeffrey Brown: So now I see a Mexico bar, an Italian restaurant. I don’t see anything Haitian.

Dudley Alexis: That’s what happened with gentrification. You see that fracture happening in your community.

Jeffrey Brown: Filmmaker and visual artist Dudley Alexis, who grew up in Haiti and came to Miami as a teenager, has seen many of his favorite spots disappear.

He has dreams of renting his own art studio in the neighborhood, but knows there’s little chance now.

Dudley Alexis: You come here for the food. The ideal, you come here for at a friend’s house for a great get-together. You come here for the music. Those are the memories I want to keep experience of Little Haiti. And I want Little Haiti to be keep — to be here, to be a center for the community.

No matter where a Haitian is in the diaspora, they can come in Little Haiti to feel like a — to get a little bit of sense of home.

Jeffrey Brown: For now, Dudley works on his art from his home in northern Miami. It’s where he designed and painted the piece hanging in the current exhibit.

Dudley Alexis: People under the tree playing dominoes is something that’s constant that I have seen either in Little Haiti or here. And that memory…

Jeffrey Brown: Is very familiar to me.

Dudley Alexis: … is very familiar to me. And you can see many aspects of the community there, and also the tree of the idea of, like, something that is rooted.

Jeffrey Brown: But it’s also interesting because you say something that is rooted, because a lot of you and others here were uprooted.

Dudley Alexis: You build a community, and all of a sudden they tell you’re being pushed out. They’re building a new neighborhood, but you’re not desired to be in that new neighborhood.

Jeffrey Brown: As for Juste, he hopes the exhibit allows those who have experienced Little Haiti to remember what makes it so special and push us all to consider what’s at stake.

Carl-Philippe Juste: I hope that people still see themselves, see themselves in the community, which is a gift. And I hope they see themselves and be able to value that, value it so much that they’re willing to maintain it.

Jeffrey Brown: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in Little Haiti, Miami.