Inside The Turmoil Clouding Miami's Largest Affordable Housing Project

As the developer behind a 4,000-unit megaproject in Miami's West Little River neighborhood attempts to secure a loan to start construction, disputes over the project are piling up.

Three separate lawsuits have been filed over the last four months against The HueHub, a planned workforce housing development that is Miami’s largest project using the state's Live Local Act, being led by Spanish developer Pablo Castro. 

Castro is being sued by his former partner, Laura Tauber, who claims she was forced out of the project and not compensated for years of work as the local face of HueHub. A former architect accused Castro of failing to pay its bills, and a local chamber of commerce alleges that the developer stole its trade secrets for financing discussions.

Castro and Tauber were all smiles a year ago when they struck a landmark agreement with a group of unions to dedicate 70% of the units in the project to essential workers like firefighters, police officers, teachers and municipal employees. 

Now, their partnership has dissolved in a bitter legal dispute. Tauber claims Castro threw her out of their shared office and destroyed her files in an attempt to discredit the work she did on HueHub. Castro claims Tauber was a partner in name only and never chipped in financially.

In the background, the union leaders who signed onto the project have been left in the dark about the future of affordable housing promised to their members.

“They had this whole family-type-oriented business model,” said SeAdoreia Brown, the president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, representing the division for Miami-Dade County employees. “It's a bit shocking to me.”

The seven-tower project was designed to chip away at the growing affordability crisis in Miami-Dade County, where more than 520,000 working households — more than half the population — are either in poverty or unable to pay for basic necessities to make ends meet, according to a 2025 report by United Way.

Miami residents spend nearly 34% of their income on rent, making it the least affordable city among 183 markets ranked by WalletHub.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Miami in April was $2,580, according to Zumper. HueHub, by contrast, would dedicate 3,000 fully furnished units to union members with fixed rents starting at $1,300 for studios, $1,600 for one-bedroom units and $1,900 for two-bedroom apartments. 

To do so, the developers have spent the last three years bringing the project to life — leveraging state laws that maximize density and provide tax incentives and reaching out to the county’s workforce. But with legal entanglements piling up, the local developer booted from the project team and financing not yet secured, doubt is creeping in about whether HueHub will be able to rise out of the ground.

Castro didn't provide comment or respond to a list of detailed questions in time for publication. Tauber declined to comment.

Origins

Castro moved to South Florida after selling his Barcelona-based development firm, Grupo Corp., about four years ago.

Not too long after, he partnered up with Tauber — who has owned, developed and operated more than 1M SF of multifamily, office and retail with her husband through their family firm, Taubco — for his first Miami project.

They submitted proposals for HueHub in 2024, outlining a 12-acre vision with seven, 35-story towers, 4,032 housing units and 200K SF of amenity space, such as coworking, pools and gyms. The $880M, Arquitectonica-designed project received final approval in August.

The mixed-use development is the largest proposed under the Live Local Act, a 2023 state law that allows developers to exceed local height restrictions if they make at least 40% of units affordable to those making up to 120% of the area median income.

HueHub's agreement with the unions, which would lock in prices for 10 years while waiving move-in costs and credit checks, would provide units for hundreds of Miami-Dade County employees who are facing homelessness, Brown said.

“We've had folks that are full-time employees being forced to sleep in their car, take baths at the gym,” Brown said.

“When this project came to us, it was like, 'OK, it's a no-brainer,’” she added.

The developers held a demolition ceremony on March 4 after preparing the site for groundbreaking but haven’t been able to celebrate since.

Disputes

A week later, the Castro-Tauber partnership imploded.

Tauber sued Castro and his affiliated companies, alleging that she hadn’t been paid for the three years she worked to get the project approved. She claimed she would be owed up to $150M if the project comes to fruition, but Castro refused to put the agreement in writing.

Their disagreement came to a head in February, when Tauber, Castro and their respective lawyers held a settlement meeting, according to court filings. Castro became “aggressive and forcefully demanded” that Tauber permanently leave HueHub, Tauber wrote in one filing. 

Her email was immediately deactivated and her headshot on the website — which identified her as HueHub's president, according to an archived version of the website from August — was taken down, she said.

Castro’s former assistant, Frances Reyes, described the meeting in a sworn deposition as “very intense” and “a really scary argument.”

Reyes said she organized the papers of handwritten notes, site and floor plans, draft leases, letters of intent and printed emails left behind on Tauber's desk, according to the deposition.

After separating the papers into piles of rental agreements, emails and handwritten notes, Reyes presented the stacks to Castro. He came back with a roughly 3-inch stack of paper to throw away, she said in her deposition.

“He came out with a pile and he put it upside-down on my desk,” Reyes said. “He's like, ‘This is garbage.’”

Among the documents tossed were notes outlining Tauber’s interest in the project, according to a motion by Tauber's attorney.

Castro has denied Tauber's characterization of her role as a partner on the project, claiming she was only listed as such under the interpretation that she would raise and invest equity and share project costs — which he claims she failed to do.

Tauber claims she was also responsible for securing the deal with the nine unions to occupy 3,000 units in HueHub, which Castro disputed.

Leaders of two out of the nine unions that signed up for the project, Florida State Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 133 and AFSCME Local 199, told Bisnow they dealt with Tauber in negotiations more so than Castro.

Al Palacio, president of FOP Lodge 133, which represents officers of the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department, hasn’t spoken with anyone involved in The HueHub or received any updates on the project since signing the deal last summer. He told Bisnow this week he was unaware of the dispute between Castro and Tauber.

He recalled that the developers approached the union for a deal before signing a contract that allocated roughly 90 units toward members of his union.

While Brown, who represents county employees, hasn’t spoken to either Castro or Tauber since August, she has still been in contact with other HueHub employees. The parties amended their agreement last week to allow her union members to choose what buildings they want to live in rather than being assigned, Brown said.

Brown, who represents 8,000 Miami-Dade County workers, was brought into the project through a lobbyist who had Tauber as a client, she said.

After the partnership blew up, more lawsuits followed, which both Brown and Palacio also had no knowledge of.

Architecture and design firm D’Lola Design & Construction, led by Silvia Garcia Llorca, filed to sue Castro and two affiliates claiming he owes more than $113K after changing their payment structure multiple times since the firm was hired in 2023, according to the suit filed within the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.

While Arquitectonica was the official architect on the project, which D’Lola claimed Castro said was for brand recognition, the company worked on prefabricated kitchens and bathrooms and standardizing designs of the units.

The most recent claim against him was filed at the end of May by the Miami Gardens Chamber of Commerce — which sued Castro, the entity he manages and three others. The chamber claims Castro took a meeting with the chamber, then used financial data, deal terms, strategy and planning from that meeting for his own benefit before cutting it out from “ownership and economic participation.”

Castro declined D’Lola’s claims and told The Real Deal he didn't know anyone from the chamber. 

What's Next

Castro has been pursuing a roughly $600M construction loan with a New York-based lender since last year, Bloomberg previously reported.

While the developer first planned to break ground by the end of 2025, then at the beginning of 2026, Castro told TRD in May the updated groundbreaking is set for next month with financing in the final stages.

Some involved with the project are pinning their hopes on that statement because it's the only way they can get paid.

An architect still involved with the project told Bisnow that HueHub has withheld payments for services already rendered until the construction loan is finalized.

For others, it's one of the only projects that would be able to house Miami’s working class. If it doesn’t get built, the goal of closing the 90,000-unit deficit for residents making about $75K annually, according to a 2025 report by Miami Homes For All, gets a little further away.

“It's a bit concerning,” Brown said. “Considering the members and the members' best interest, you kind of always want a seamless process with a company that doesn't have any issues.”