Making just housing a human right

LOUISVILLE — Adrian Alberto Madriz will never forget the smell of burning mattresses.

After Hurricane Andrew — a violent, 1992 Category 5 storm that left close to 100 people dead and several hundred thousand more homeless — destroyed his family’s suburban Miami apartment building, 4-year-old Madriz and his parents were forced to evacuate to Orlando. 

They later returned to a horrific scene — and a smell — forever seared into the young Madriz’s memory.

“When we came back to Miami, all of the windows in our apartment house had been completely destroyed,” he recalled. “The furniture that was inside had been sucked out because of the enormous amount of pressure from the wind, and the entire parking lot was littered with mattresses and insulation. I’ll never forget the smell of rotting insulation after the storm. Every single time I smell it now, it brings me back to that day and the very painful memories of that moment. That was my first very severe experience of housing insecurity.”

And, for Madriz, that was just the first of what would become three defining moments that led him to make housing “his life.”

As a 17-year-old, he again experienced housing insecurity after coming out as gay to his religiously conservative parents.

“Since I was told at the time that God was not going to accept me,” said Madriz, “I had to choose between my ‘lifestyle’ and being someone who believed in God and was a good Christian.”

Because he couldn’t give up his faith, he ran away from home. 

When his parents finally found him where he was staying at a friend’s house, because they would not allow their son to return home, he instead went to live with his grandparents.

“The whole experience was instructive for me, because before I went to stay with my friend, I looked for any resources for youth like myself who didn’t have a place to go because their parents had rejected them,” Madriz said. “When I realized there weren’t any such resources, I told myself, ‘When I become an adult, that’s what I want to address.’ There really is no sanctuary for youth in these situations and there really should be.”

Madriz’s third pivotal episode took place during his first job after college as a housing organizer with the Miami Workers Center, whose mission is “to build the power and self-determination of south Florida’s most oppressed communities.” His first job for the nonprofit was “to go knocking on doors in a poor, historically Black neighborhood called Liberty City.”

Approaching the assignment with what he later realized was an unfounded fear of violence based on the area’s high crime rate, he experienced the people as “incredibly open and hospitable.” 

“When I would ask them what kind of housing issues they were dealing with, they would invite me to come inside and take a tour,” Madriz recalled. “The things that they showed me were shocking. I saw black mold growing on the ceiling, the floor and the walls. I saw sewage that had backed up into the bathtub, creating a terrible smell throughout the house. There were rats, roaches and every single kind of plague you could think of.”

Why, he wondered, were his neighbors in Miami living in unsafe housing in one of the richest cities in the richest country in the world?

Because the whole situation struck Madriz as immoral — with “forgotten neighborhoods” being allowed to fall into neglect while landlords avoided prosecution— he decided then and there to take action.

And that’s when SMASH, for which Madriz serves as co-executive director, was born. 

SMASH (Struggle for Miami’s Affordable and Sustainable Housing), the first community land trust and affordable housing co-operative in Liberty City, began in 2015. Madriz and Berlinda Dixon got together with Porgie “Gigi” Town, Sharice Taylor, Trenise Bryant — also a co-executive director and co-founder — and other residents of Liberty City to do something about slumlords who were taking advantage of the neighborhoods. 

Using a community land trust model, SMASH provides sustainable and preserved land that the community controls and is building power to make housing a human right in Miami. 

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Since its founding, SMASH has been successful in acquiring three properties, with its first housing project becoming operational in 2022. The third property will eventually become the kind of LGBTQ+ housing that Madriz long dreamed of since his teenage years.

But the founders’ collective dreams might not have become a reality without assistance from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Madriz said that a PC(USA) grant in community development was “one of the principal reasons we could open our first housing cooperative.”

Financial support from the PC(USA) comes primarily through generous gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing, which helps SMASH pursue safe and just housing for marginalized communities in Miami.

Centered in the prophet Micah’s call to do justice, One Great Hour of Sharing has been helping neighbors in need around the world for over 75 years. The annual Offering gives the PC(USA) a tangible way to share God’s love by joining together to help eliminate the root causes of the world’s injustices. 

In addition to supporting community development and self-actualization, One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS) also addresses such causes as disaster relief, food insecurity and immigration/migration through ministries of the Church affirmed by the General Assembly. 

Although the Offering may be taken anytime, most congregations receive it on Palm Sunday or Easter Sunday, which this year fall on March 29 and April 5, respectively.

“By repairing the breaches of access and sustainability and promoting the restoration of dignity through self-determination,” said the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson,manager of the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People, “SMASH does powerful community development work that lifts up quality affordable housing, human dignity, the power of voice and the engagement of justice.”

SMASH’s role in addressing the unjust systems that perpetuate poverty doesn’t end with the provision of housing.

“The way we structure our housing is that when you live with us, you don’t just get affordable housing, but you also get trained to be a housing justice organizer,” Madriz said. “In exchange for affordable housing, you also volunteer some of your time to do outreach, to put together events and to manage campaigns.”

As Madriz boldly envisions a future when good-quality, climate-resilient housing will be understood as a human right, he and his colleagues aim to have 1.5 million Miamians sign on to SMASH’s Miami Housing Justice Agenda by the year 2030. 

Yet although he knows it’s a challenge, Madriz sees it as achievable, thanks, in part, to support from One Great Hour of Sharing.

“In an environment, especially nowadays, in which there is a lot of risk-averse type of philanthropy, the PC(USA) really took a leap of faith in what we were doing,” said Madriz. “Making a gift to the One Great Hour of Sharing gives Presbyterians an opportunity to support the entire PC(USA) because so many different organizations are doing tremendous work as a result of their generous gifts. If a donor wants to use their funds in a way that will impact a movement as opposed to one organization as part of a shared strategy, then OGHS is the best place for their gift.”

Johnson, too, believes that OGHS is “one of the most direct and engaged ways that Presbyterians can do the work of repair and healing” through a broad network of mission partners.

“Presbyterians should support OGHS because the ministries that receive it truly live the calling of Christ in bringing hope, transformation and healing to the world,” he said. “Supporting OGHS is the Presbyterian way of saying yes to God’s work of repair and justice in the world as they live out their calling as Christians.”