County 5-year plan targeting affordable housing

Last May, Miami-Dade commissioners resolved to address housing needs of residents.

Motions by Commissioners Marleine Bastien and René García were consolidated into a single resolution. Its goal: To develop a five-year housing plan that assesses the county’s population growth and the need for housing the homeless, as well as affordable and workforce housing.

The resolution and a request for regular status reports were spawned by harsh facts.

According to a report Mayor Daniella Levine Cava submitted last week, the Florida Coalition to End Homelessness finds the state has the third-highest population of unhoused individuals in the nation.

Miami-Dade County is home to around 1,000 unsheltered residents, the mayor’s report added, “with another 2,400 homeless individuals residing in shelter facilities, according to the most recent Homeless Trust census.”

As a first step, the county’s Public Housing and Community Development Department engaged the University of Miami’s Office of Civic and Community Engagement to help develop the plan. Pitching in is Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center.

In an update, Mayor Levine Cava said the office of civic engagement consulted with “and obtained data and insights from county offices” and reached out to the housing authorities of Hialeah, Homestead, Miami Beach, and Miami.

Commission Chairman Oliver G. Gilbert III, commissioners and engagement office representatives began biweekly meetings with others involved.

The developing plan, Mayor Levine Cava’s report says, “acknowledges the need for additional affordable housing units to accommodate the needs of our growing region, where over 50% of households are cost-burdened (paying more than 30% of income on housing and related costs).” The plan’s ambitious aim, her report notes, is to secure “housing for all current and anticipated future residents.”

The project is inventorying affordable and workforce housing, housing for the homeless, and units for the disabled. It aims to eliminate substandard dwellings and structurally improve existing substandard housing.

The project staff also is preparing a list of adequate sites for future housing, as well as seeking:

■Plans for the placement of persons at housing sites.

■Programs to meet the county’s housing needs.

■Programs and actions to partner across sectors to address housing needs, streamline permitting, and minimize costs and delays for housing.

■The creation or preservation of housing to minimize the need for additional local services and avoid the concentration of housing only in specific areas.

■Recommendations from each county commissioner.

■Recommendations from the Miami-Dade County Affordable Housing Advisory Board.

■Recommendations from the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust.

The project will estimate the county’s population over the next five years “to estimate the numbers of each type of housing unit needed to meet the projected demand.”

The Homeless Trust is providing an inventory of temporary and permanent housing project types, including emergency shelters, transitional housing, safe havens, and other permanent housing.

The trust also is collecting homeless data, “including persons who are unsheltered, sheltered, homeless for the first time, families with minor children, veterans, unaccompanied youth 18-24, older adults, and disabled and chronically homeless households.”

The project is studying the “distribution of housing for a range of incomes and types, including mobile homes and manufactured homes.”

The report is to highlight programs available to property owners such as Public Housing and Community Development’s housing preservation through an existing grant program that offers opportunities to improve livability in otherwise unsubsidized units. The grant provides resources for moderate rehabilitation to owners of existing rental housing to stabilize and preserve affordability.

The county has prepared an inventory of publicly owned properties that may be appropriate for affordable housing development, the report notes, and is to share the list with commissioners when the final report is submitted later this year.

The county has supported increased density in urban centers along the bus rapid transit corridor as a proactive transit-oriented development planning model.

In 2022, the county introduced a policy to allow and encourage increased density within one-half mile of Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit corridors to further enhance opportunities for housing.

The mayor’s report says the “county’s Comprehensive Development Master Plan provides guidelines for higher density multi-use districts in locations where mass transit, roadways, and highways are highly accessible.”

Sarah Cody, chief of the county’s Office of Historic Preservation, has emphasized the office’s commitment to the appropriate reuse of existing historic structures and says it “is supportive of exploring and facilitating the provision of affordable housing in Miami-Dade County through historic preservation efforts,” the report notes.

The project is identifying historically significant housing, compiling a survey of all residential structures built in Miami-Dade prior to 1974.

The county commission has demonstrated its commitment to historic preservation and affordable housing, the report states, through appropriations to the Dade Heritage Trust over the past several years and an allocation to the Office of Historic Preservation to undertake a countywide heritage survey for the first time since 1980.

The project team has identified over 250,000 residential properties built between 1901 and 1974, meeting the 50-year benchmark for potential historic resource eligibility.

“A historic resource survey should be undertaken to identify and document these residential resources and evaluate their potential for use as historically significant affordable housing properties,” according to the mayor’s report.

“Further exacerbating this issue,” the report says, “is the extreme need for housing units for lower income residents.” According to Miami Homes for All, the county has a shortage of over 135,000 units for residents earning less than half the median income of $74,700 that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development cites as of 2023.

The county’s 2023-2024 budget earmarked over $500 million to address the housing crisis.