Living Cities:The National Community Development Initiative

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Deco style house

Current Challenges

Miami ’s median household income grew only modestly during the 1990s (at 3.3%, below the national average) to just shy of $23,500, the lowest of the country’s 100 largest cities. Perhaps more significantly its middle class shrank, and poverty falls very unevenly by race, on African Americans in particular, of whom more than 40% are poor.

Part of the problem is that the broader Miami metropolitan area, including both Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, extends farther and farther each year. Today only one in six residents of Miami-Dade lives in Miami proper, only half of the City of Miami’s working residents are employed within its borders, and most commutes in the metro area begin and end in the suburbs. This makes it even harder for poor residents to advance, as many have a difficult time finding transportation—more than 40% of Miami’s African American residents do not have access to an automobile. Exacerbating the burden on poor residents, nearly half of renter households pay more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing, the highest share among the 23 Living Cities.

Miami

Turning Neighborhoods Around

Building Capacity

Through its local partner, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Living Cities provides funding for an operating support collaborative. That effort brings together local public and private funders to work with 15 area CDCs, helping them become more effective as real estate developers and representatives of their neighborhoods. LISC also trains CDC staff, offering them a series of courses in connection with Florida International University .

Diversifying: Housing, Commercial, and Community Facilities Development

As developers, the CDCs in the Miami area have proven resilient and resourceful. They built over 450 affordable homes in 2002, almost double the number of two years earlier.

Carrfour, a Dade County nonprofit supportive housing provider, used $800,000 of Living Cities money to help acquire and build the 80-unit Little Haiti Gateway in Miami 's Little Haiti neighborhood.
Little Haiti has also seen the construction of the 15-condominium Biscayne East Townhomes.
A $375,000 Living Cities loan aided the construction of 30 condominium units, called Jubilee Villas, in East Little Havana.
Renovations of historic architectural properties in South Beach yielded 67 rental apartments for low-income families, the elderly, and persons with AIDS.

Some CDCs have branched outinto commercial and community facilities development. Over $900,000 in Living Cities funding supports East Little Havana CDC's Latin Quarter Specialty Center, a mixed-use project that will include Hispanic-oriented retail spaces on the ground floor and two levels of parking plus 45 condominium units on the top three floors. The Opa-Locka Community Development Corporation used Living Cities grants to enlarge its economic development staff and perform early market studies to support the conversion of the old Opa-Locka airport into an industrial park and job center.

Pilot Cities Initiative: East Little Havana and Overtown

Lyric Theatre

This is a complex program led by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Collins Center for Public Policy. The effort—one of the four Pilot Cities Initiative efforts of Living Cities— aims to take two economically and culturally isolated neighborhoods, East Little Havana and Overtown, and reconnect them to each other and to the city as a whole. It is a comprehensive community planning process that will address housing, commerce, open space, and community and cultural facilities. To learn more about East Little Havana, Overtown, and the Pilot Cities Initiative, visit the PCI page.

Miami Facts

Cities

Current Challenges

Miami

Turning Neighborhoods Around

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