image copyrightGetty ImagesMiami is attracting many new residents, both from inside and outside the United States.Something is moving in Miami and it is moving faster and faster.The great city of South Florida has become a magnet for people and money from other parts of the United States and the world, also becoming one of the new reference centers for many technological entrepreneurship projects.Comparisons with Silicon Valley, the great Californian technological center, have become common in press articles and the speeches of some local politicians."We have never seen anything like this before," Rebecca Danta, from the Miami Angels firm, told BBC Mundo, which is dedicated to connecting venture capitalists interested in investing with entrepreneurs in the technology sector seeking financing for their projects.For her, Miami is benefiting from "the decentralization caused by the pandemic," which led many of those who worked remotely in US states where coronavirus restrictions were more severe to seek a more benign climate, more freedom and less taxes.In an article published in the Miami Herald, Craig Studniky, CEO of the real estate agency Related ISG Realty, stated that "for years, South Florida has seen a population increase of more than 900 people a day", but the pandemic "It has acted as the catalyst for one of the largest increases in immigration ever seen."The phenomenon is reflected in the housing market, with a 39.8% year-on-year increase in sales in the first 4 months of 2021, according to data from the city's real estate agents association.This boom in the real estate market is precisely what worries many local politicians and activists, who see how access to housing for working and middle-class families is complicated, in one of the most unequal cities in the entire United States.image copyrightGetty ImagesMany employees in the United States who can now work remotely have chosen Miami to do so.The city of Miami is a financial center of reference for Latin America and traditionally a recipient of immigrants from that region, as well as the usual destination for its tourists from other parts of the United States, including students who usually enjoy the famous Miami Beach in their spring holidays, the so-called "spring break".In the popular imagination, Miami was immortalized in the 1980s with the success of the television series "Miami Vice", in which the police couple played by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas chased unscrupulous drug traffickers aboard a convertible Ferrari .The plot of the series reflected the role of the city as the main sink for continental drug trafficking, but the type of economic and human capital that now flows here seems to be different."Housing demand is near all-time highs as more buyers from the Northeast and West Coast, as well as financial and technology companies, relocate here," he says in the realtors' report.Delian Asparouhov is one of the entrepreneurs who has moved to Miami.The young entrepreneur Delian Asparouhov is one of the faces of the new migration to Miami.Partner in the space "start-up" Varda Space Industries and in the also technological Funders Fund, he is one of those who in recent times has changed California for Florida."He had lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2013, but in April my girlfriend and I moved here."They bought an apartment in Wynwood, an area that for decades was a neighborhood of immigrants and low-income workers and is now Miami's sought-after art and design district."I have more productive in-person dates, I work harder, I'm happier, I sunbathe more, I'm fitter, I eat better, and my girlfriend is happier. So far it's all pluses."One of the things that cheered Asparouhov up was the unexpected response he got to one of the tweets from him before he moved."What if we take Silicon Valley to Miami?" he wondered.He replied Francis Suarez, the mayor of the city of Miami: "How can I help?"It was one more of the milestones of the mayor's network campaign to turn Miami into a new great center of technological entrepreneurship, in which he has been engaged for several years."We want to be on the next wave of innovation," Suarez told the New York Times.The mayor can be seen at the technology fairs that are held in Miami with increasing frequency.image copyrightGetty ImagesThe mayor of the city of Miami, Francis Suarez, wants to turn it into a major technology investment hub.He recently proposed accepting bitcoin for tax payments and using it to pay public employees, an idea that won him even more admirers in the community of bitcoin enthusiasts.The mayor's efforts seem to have begun to bear fruit in recent months, when figures from the corporate world such as Carl Icahn, one of the most successful investors on Wall Street according to Forbes magazine, or Antonio Gracias, president of the Tesla investment committee, They settled in Miami.But Suarez's is not the only official push for migration to Miami.The city also benefits from the fact that Florida is one of only 9 states in the country with no state income tax, which is a huge draw for individuals and businesses considering locating here.Rebecca Danta maintains that "although the pandemic has accelerated it, what is happening in Miami is something that has been looking for a long time."Delian Asparouhov believes that, in general, "there will be an increase in living standards here, as there are many companies that will hire engineers from local universities" and "tech companies usually bring a lot of prosperity wherever they go."But the process could have other unintended effects, beyond the temporary disembarkation of employees who fled restrictions in their places of origin.image copyrightGetty ImagesWhile restrictions continued elsewhere in the US, bars and restaurants remained open in Miami.Eileen Higgins, commissioner of District 5 of Miami-Dade County, which includes the center of the city, told BBC Mundo that "what is happening is very worrying.""The arrival of technology companies is good news, because they create jobs, but in Miami we have a historic crisis of access to housing and this can make things even worse, making it very difficult for working and middle-class families. have a place to live".The commissioner proposes the use of public land to build protected housing and highlights one of the peculiarities of the Miami real estate market."Many of the houses here are not houses, but bank accounts," she comments, alluding to the houses bought by investors from Latin American countries to save their savings from instability in their countries of origin.Higgins fears that Miami is beginning to see the movie whose outcome is already known in California, where "the technological revolution led to a housing crisis", and highlights that the Florida city suffers from "high levels of inequality", since "here there are many people who live from low-paid jobs".image copyrightGetty ImagesAfrican-Americans suffer in social differences.Inequality is a problem, moreover, with racial overtones.According to a report by the company Clever Real Estate and the NGO Dream Builders for Equality, the Miami area and nearby Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach ranked fourth on the list of 15 US urban concentrations with the greatest disparity in property value between districts with majority black population and the rest.In those with a black majority, the median property value was 478% lower.According to a real estate broker who preferred not to give his name, "the market is now extremely hot."There is a lot of demand for little supply, which encourages owners to get rid of their tenants to sell the properties.This is what happened to the residents of the Paradise Park mobile home park in the Allapattah area, who recently received an eviction notice because the land had been sold to a company planning to build on it.Davalyn Suarez, an attorney representing the tenants' association, told NBC that "this is happening too often and affordable housing is getting scarcer.""The trend is that they buy the land where the mobile homes are and build apartment buildings, which they can rent to more people and for more money."image copyrightGetty ImagesPrices have risen and an apartment in Brickell, the financial heart, is not within the reach of many.And much of that land where the poorest residents live is in areas that have become more desirable precisely because they are not on the coast and are less vulnerable to rising sea levels, a serious problem that Miami will face in the coming decades.Rebecca Danta, of the Miami Angels, believes that the solution to some of the problems posed by this phenomenon could lie in the influx of new residents with more purchasing power."We know that in places like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, which have had a booming tech economy, that has created huge income gaps and as early as 2013 Miami had one of the largest gaps between the cost of living and the average income. One of the ways to deal with this problem is by creating better-paid jobs, and the sector that does that is technology."Regardless of the outcome, Danta does not believe that the fever for living and investing in Miami will die down in the short term: "This is here to stay and Miami is going to be a relevant place for many years."Now you can receive notifications from BBC World.Download the new version of our app and activate it so you don't miss out on our best content.© 2022 BBC.The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our stance on external links.