Our Agenda
We want everyone in Miami to have a quality, healthy home that they can afford, and an end to the affordable housing crisis. We can achieve this by getting our county to adopt the values and policies of the Miami Housing Justice Agenda. The agenda is the product of four years of community engagement, research and best practices and was designed by a coalition of different community organizations and policy experts including Miami Homes for All, The Greater Miami Housing Alliance, Florida International University Metropolitan Center, University of Florida Shimberg Center, City of Miami Connect Capital Initiative, Homes for All National, Grassroots Global Justice, Climate Justice Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network and Gulf South Green New Deal. Our goal is to get 1.5 Million Miami-Dade residents (half the county population) to pledge their support to the Miami Housing Justice Agenda by the year 2030.
By signing this petition, you are pledging your personal (or organization’s) support to the agenda. On the following page, you’ll be able to let your local elected officials know that you support it, and can encourage them to do the same. Most importantly, this is your first step on a journey that every Miamian is embarking on together to make housing a human right. There are many more steps that you can take after this, like starting your own campaign to get your friends and family to support the agenda. But today is very special for you because it is the day that you decided the status quo of homelessness, unaffordability, climate gentrification, and slumlords is a stain on our city, and does not reflect who we really are. By signing this, you are saying that you believe in a brighter future, where all Miamians have the most important foundation to pursue their dreams and fulfill their potential: A home.
Our Approach
Everyone deserves to live in safe and healthy housing.
Values Vision:
Housing is a human right that should be affordable, available, and accessible. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, before the pandemic, almost 40 million people were struggling to pay their rent or mortgage. This is because they worked one or more jobs or received a social security check that did not cover the already high cost of rent. As we all know, things got worse during the pandemic when people lost their jobs or could not go to work. According to the Community Justice Project, as of December 31, 2021, landlords filed over 20,000 evictions in Miami Dade County since the start of the pandemic.
Policy Solutions:
- Establish a Right to Counsel for tenants facing eviction so they can get a lawyer
- Repair and lien properties with significant code violations
- Make sure that new rental homes preserved or built with public funds or land have “for-cause” eviction protections (as subsidized and public housing currently have). This limits landlords from evicting tenants for unreasonable causes.
- Set limits on the amount of rent that landlords can charge tenants. (According to CBS Miami, rents in Miami have gone up 49.8% on average from December 2021 to December 2022. It is not necessary for any landlord to increase rent by 49.8% when their property taxes do not increase by 49.8%. Link to CBS Miami article here: https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/miami-leads-nation-rents-soar/)
- Put money into creating 210,000 units of affordable housing in Miami Dade County by 2030, so that we end houselessness and lower rents
- Require universal design for all homes to make them as accessible as possible to the most people
Communities, not companies, should have the freedom to decide what is built in the community.
Values Vision:
Make sure we build housing that communities create and make decisions about themselves. Communities should have the freedom to decide what is built there, not companies. During the pandemic, large companies around the Country have used evictions as an opportunity to unethically profit. They have evicted tenants and charged higher and higher rents to people who weren’t living there before. This process continues to displace former residents.
Policy Solutions:
- Support land ownership models that will preserve affordability in perpetuity (like long-term leaseholds, shared equity models, cooperatives, and community land trusts) through pilot programs and working with local non-profit organizations for community creation
- Create a Preservation Interagency Council to prevent the loss of subsidized housing
- Issue a new larger housing bond, last bond including housing funds was issued in 2017 (Miami Forever Bond)
- Increase transparency and efficient use of zoning incentive funds such as the contributions going to Miami 21 Public Benefits Trust Fund and then deposited to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund
- Abate property taxes and continue to provide density & other incentives in exchange for affordability
- Continue increasing budget allocation to the County Affordable Housing Trust Fund to support preservation and rehabilitation of Naturally-Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH)
- Structure development fees according to impact of each project by measuring displacement risk and vulnerabilities
- Require joint or simultaneous review by multiple departments of permitting applications
- Maximize efficiency in payment process of local development funds
- Implement electronic permitting review and allow for interface/coordination with other jurisdictions
- Conduct internal and external audit of permitting processes
- Require major developments to contribute substantially to affordable housing goals through community benefits agreements (CBAs) or equitable development plans
- Moderately increase density along major corridors
- Legalize and regulate accessory dwelling units that are not used as short-term vacation rentals
People who experience the problems the most are the people who must lead the efforts to fix these problems.
Values Vision:
Even though the housing crisis is very bad right now, rising rents and climate change have been forcing people to leave their communities for decades. Because of the US’s history of subordinating policies (like the Dawes Allotment Act, segregation, and redlining), Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, and low-income households led by women, have been the most affected. (For more information, read the United Frontline Table’s People’s Orientation for a Regenerative Economy. Link here: https://climatejusticealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ProtectRepairInvestTransformdoc24s.pdf)
Policy Solutions:
- Fully implement the protections and resources established in the Tenant Bill of Rights
- Negotiate tenant agreements with residents of public housing
- Facilitate searches and development of affordable housing through consolidating resources, information, and opportunities through the new Office of Housing Advocacy
- Assign land to the unsheltered for temporary encampments and permanent tiny homes, that is community controlled
- There should be diversity of gender and race in the design and construction of publicly funded housing projects.
- The United States should honor its agreements with Tribal Nations. One part of doing this is by making sure Tribal Nations can get the money they need from federal housing programs. Have the US government put more money into the Indian Housing Block Grant. Make sure money specifically goes toward Indian Community Development Block Grants and Imminent Threat Grants.
We should live in homes that use materials and energy sources, like solar energy, that are healthy for the planet. We should live in homes that keep us safe from natural disasters like hurricanes.
Values Vision:
Miami-Dade County is at the epicenter of climate change with our communities facing rising costs, sea level, and elevation gentrification. Rent and energy burden leave communities exceptionally vulnerable to danger and displacement to extreme weather events. In addition, too many renters deal with dangerous conditions like mold, leaking roofs, and peeling lead paint that their landlords refuse to fix.
Policy Solutions:
- Weatherization to protect homes from weather and lower energy costs, and climate change adaptation
- Stop evictions before, during, and after natural disasters for all residents
- Rezone public land and commercial properties to enable adaptive reuse, alternative uses for nonconforming lots, and alternative building design
- Make sure all homes can access energy that is healthy for the planet, like solar energy
Hey, this is so cool!