At night, the hepcats and their dates caught a movie or danced the night away at clubs. Then in the 1970s, the area fell victim to a failing economy that crippled much of the country. The drug trade mushroomed. The problems were compounded in the early 1980s with several episodes of social unrest. Today, severe social and economic ills persist.
Poverty is rampant.
And less than half of the area's high school students graduate. Yet it is indisputable that something tangible is taking hold in this community. Crime has plummeted. So far this year, Liberty City accounted for 13 of Miami's murders, compared with 21 last year, when the neighborhood had the city's highest murder rate. Even more telling, drug-related homicides have dropped from 14 in 1996 to five this year.