Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami

The session opens by introducing Francis Suarez as the forty-third mayor of Miami. He has served two terms since 2017, and his tenure is due to end in September because of term limits. The introducer jokes that term limits are 'flexible' these days. The opening frames the talk around rankings and a short slogan: Miami is described as the happiest and healthiest city in America, with a three-part formula behind its success.

The formula for success is simple. Keep taxes low, keep people safe, lean into innovation.

The first question refers back to a conversation at the first All-In summit in Miami a couple of years earlier, when the mayor took what the questioner calls a 'no nonsense approach' to homelessness. The questioner argues that much of the homelessness problem in major cities is really an addiction problem, says the mayor was among the first to say so plainly, and asks whether the situation has worsened or is intractable.

Giving a junkie a home doesn't exactly get them off the street.

The answer leads with census data. The city counts its homeless population twice a year, in January and in the summer. The January count was described as an eleven-year low: 546 unsheltered homeless people in the entire city of Miami, plus 'a couple thousand' in shelters. The speaker also describes an annual mayor's ball that raises money to end homelessness, scheduled this year for May 31. The stated goal is for Miami to become the first major American city to reach 'functional zero' homelessness.

The strategy is described as having two layers. The first is macroeconomic. The speaker claims Miami has the lowest unemployment and the highest median wage growth in America, that taxes were cut to their lowest level in history, and that the city grew 40% in nine years. These claims are linked to the happiness and health rankings with the reasoning that people who are happy, healthy and working are probably not homeless. The second layer is programmatic: working with charities that reunite homeless people with family elsewhere in the country, and renting homes instead of building them. Renting avoids the construction process while still providing the same 'wraparound services', which the speaker calls a way to 'hack through that process.'