The Villa Maria affordable housing building in Miami Beach Nonprofits and city planners are working to create more affordable housing, but they’re up against legislation that rewards rampant development. This story and the accompanying audio segments were produced through a collaboration involving journalists from Southerly, Climate Central and WLRN. A little over four feet of elevation is all that’s standing between some waterfront neighborhoods winding through Miami Beach and the unrelenting force of the Atlantic Ocean. At Eighth and Washington, where Gregario Lopez, 81, lives in a Section 8 apartment, it’s even less. Lopez has been without regular income since 2010, when a bad fall left him injured and unable to work.