Legal Advocacy for Community Building in South Florida
By John Little (written in 2003)
Miami-Dade County has seen many of its older urban and inner-ring suburban neighborhoods suffer through decades of decline, The number of "distressed" census tracts (with poverty rates of 40 percent or greater) has doubled since 1985, To counter this, Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc, (LSGMI) pursues a community building strategy that helps in the revitalization of these neighborhoods, For more than 20 years LSGMI has provided legal assistance to community development corporations with regard to their development projects and corporate needs, LSGMI has found that its community economic development advocacy is a cost-effective way to broaden its impact, Successful community development corporation projects have a direct positive impact upon the neighborhoods in which LSGMI's clients live.
Why Community Building?
The term "community development" is often used as a synonym for "housing development" or "economic development." The terms are not synonymous, Communities are geographic groupings of people who interrelate through friendships, families, organizations, and commerce, Developing a community, therefore, is much more than simply building houses, It involves rebuilding the social and economic fabric so as to reverse the downward spiral of decline, Someone must step in and spearhead an integrated and sustained effort to jump-start revitalization, Community stakeholders must provide the driving force to make it happen, The job of the community development corporation is to spearhead these types of efforts and to rally support, Community development corporations should participate in the development of the key "catalyst" projects in partnership with public and private sector entities, Communities are transformed in the process, Residents benefit from more affordable housing, strengthened families, and broadened job opportunities.
An Approach to Revitalization
Though they vary in size, scope and funding sources, community development corporations typically share the same basic characteristics: they operate within a geographically defined low-income target area; they are controlled by the people who live in those areas; and they undertake housing, economic and other types of venture development activities.
The modern history of community development corporations can be traced to the War on Poverty of the late 1960s, For a time the federal government provided grant funding to a handful of community development corporations, The grant program was premised on the presumption that the downward spiral of distressed neighborhoods was caused, at least in part, by an absence of new investments, Basic issues of financial feasibility prevented the private sector from taking on significant new ventures in these neighborhoods, Barriers included low appraised values, high land costs, expensive "brownfield" cleanup, expensive lien clearance, low purchasing power of the residents, high relocation expenses, the patchwork pattern of real estate ownership, and the need to redevelop the typically decrepit infrastructure (sewers, water, etc.), Simply put, potential deals in these neighborhoods were more expensive and difficult to complete than comparable deals elsewhere, The community development corporation was to jump-start the redevelopment process, It would work with local stakeholders in a visioning and planning process that would result in a comprehensive, integrated revitalization strategy, The strategy would seek to leverage the community's inherent assets and hidden opportunities: as projects are put into the ground, appraised values of the surrounding neighborhoods begin to creep up, allowing banks to increase their loan volume and making the area more attractive for investment.
Legal Assistance to Community Development Corporations
LSGMI generally does not help new corporations to get up and running, Instead, it focuses its limited resources on corporations that have the capacity to implement significant ventures in the lowest income neighborhoods, For this purpose LSGMI retains a full time attorney to serve approximately 25 corporations, An example of this work is the representation LSGMI provides to community development corporations in Overtown, Located just north of downtown Miami, Overtown was the economic hub of the Black community during the days of segregation, In the 1980s it was the scene of some of the worst urban rioting since the 1960s, By the early 1990s it had deteriorated, Today it is characterized by vacant lots, high unemployment and overcrowded rundown housing, Overtown has the lowest homeownership rate in the county, Most of the residents live in dilapidated apartment buildings.
Three community development corporations affiliated with Overtown churches are collaborating with the Local Initiative Support Corporation and the Knight Foundation to transform Overtown, In one instance LSGMI helped broker the donation of 14 decrepit apartment buildings to one of the community development corporations, The corporation is demolishing the buildings[ to make way for new housing development ventures including a 16-unit affordable townhouse project which has entered the construction phase, LSGMI is helping a second corporation with a 119-unit homeownership project, a joint venture with Bank of America Community Development Corporation, It is helping a third corporation develop 40 single-family homes near the Miami River in Overtown, LSGMI assisted these corporations with a variety of tasks and problems including creation of a homeowners association, various joint venture agreements, housing [code violations, property tax exemptions, subsidiary creation, loan closings, sales contracts, dispute resolution, etc, LSGMI has provided similar services to community development corporations in East Little Havana, Liberty City, Coconut Grove, "Little Haiti", semi-rural south Miami- Dade, and other parts of the county.
The Struggle To Implement Effective Strategies
The availability of subsidies (necessary to make housing units affordable to the low-income residents) heavily influences community development corporations' determinations of which particular projects to undertake, Two important subsidy programs-- Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnerships Program--are federal block grants that provide funding to the county and the larger cities for revitalization purposes, Municipalities, however, typically are not interested in providing community development corporations with funding to do things like visioning, planning, or organizing, Instead, they prefer to focus more narrowly on specific housing or economic development ventures, As a result, the corporations that have survived often have done so by becoming proficient real estate developers.
During the 80's and 90's Miami-Dade's community development corporations were frustrated further by poor performance of local governments in administering their redevelopment programs, The funding application process for the county, for example, was overly complex and, at times, irrational, Projects often were delayed for months by the county's slowness in completing routine tasks such as contract preparation, environmental clearance, and issuing simple checks.
Throughout this period the community economic development vision was never completely lost, thanks in part to the efforts of the Local Initiative Support Corporation and the Enterprise Foundation, These two organizations are nationally known "intermediaries" who provide community-based development corporations with technical assistance, grants, loans, and training, In recent years the Greater Miami office of the Local Initiative Support Corporation ] has obtained significant funding from the Knight Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and others to support projects sponsored by community development corporations, The more successful corporations have been able to somewhat diversify their funding base, As a result community development corporations continue to be able to undertake the toughest deals in the toughest neighborhoods reaching the lowest income families.
The South Florida Community Development Coalition
Out of this environment was born the South Florida Community Development Coalition, an unincorporated association of over 40 community development corporations and their allies, Following the coalition's creation in 1995, an LSGMI attorney volunteered to provide some pro bono staff support, This was a natural progression since most of the participating community development corporations were long-time LSGMI clients, The volunteered support allowed the Coalition immediately to begin doing advocacy instead of bogging down in fund-raising, LSGMI helped the coalition with things like preparing and distributing minutes and policy papers, The coalition's membership includes organizations as diverse as Little Haiti Housing Association, East Little Havana Community Development Corporation and the Urban League of Greater Miami.
In 1997 the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation agreed to provide the coalition with grant funds to cover some of its operational expenses, This allowed the coalition to hire a full time coordinator, The funding, which lasted for five years, was channeled through LSGMI, The coordinator was an LSGMI employee, The MacArthur grant was part of the foundation's "Sustainable Everglades Initiative." Urban sprawl has been the greatest threat to the everglades, The idea was to redirect some of the new growth away from the everglades and into older neighborhoods nearer to the coast, many of which have been in decline and losing population, The MacArthur Foundation funded the coalition because the coalition had been advocating in favor of policies that would eliminate the barriers that inhibited market-driven redevelopment of these neighborhoods.
The coalition's advocacy can broadly be summarized as follows: (1) more resources for low-income neighborhoods (2) better performance by local government programs, and (3) adoption of more effective redevelopment strategies, LSGMI “broadcasts" its "InfoFax" and "Email-Dispatch" newsletters to over four hundred readers, LSGMI maintains the coalition's website. LSGMI facilitates coalition committee meetings so that the members can collaborate on specific issues.
The New Paradigm
Many of the older urban areas and inner-ring suburbs continued on their downward slide during the 1990's, The Coalition advocates for implementation of its "Neighborhood Development Zone" approach as a way to begin unlocking the hidden assets and potential opportunities found in some of these neighborhoods, Implementation of local Zone programs, however, should not be viewed as short-term quick fixes, Success will result from many small steps rather than from a few great leaps, A broad vision in program design with an attention to detail in implementation is necessary, Success will require sustained, multiyear commitments from local governments, the private sector, and foundations.
Local Zone initiatives must find a way to build upon the inherent assets of the community, These might include things such as public transit stops, an abundant number of vacant parcels potentially available for redevelopment, undervalued market potential, job access, rail freight rights-of-way, a sense of place, and location efficiency, The strategy should strive to leverage existing industrial, commercial, residential, retail and institutional strengths, Tax increment financing mechanism might be used to finance infrastructure investment, In the end, the Zone initiative must find a way to make the area attractive to investors.
The goal is to transform the target community from a fragmented set of residential, commercial, and industrial sites with a reputation as being dangerous and undesirable into a cohesive neighborhood conscious of its tangible and intangible assets and directing its future.
Zone implementation benefits from high-technology planning tools, Geographic Information Systems mapping can give stakeholders a clear visual comparison of current conditions, what things will look like if current trends continue, and what things could look like with intervention. Graphical modeling software can help participants visualize alternative future scenarios. "Indicator tools" software can help participants measure, track, monitor and analyze progress on Zone implementation .
Using the Neighborhood Development Zone approach, three community development corporations are collaborating in the "79th Street Corridor Initiative." The intersection of two major transit corridors in a community near the border of Liberty City and Hialeah has been an initial focus, At the heart of the community is a development district that contains the most significant (but grossly underutilized) passenger rail hub in the State of Florida, Components of the initiative include: reinvention of the infrastructure; job access through industrial linkage and job training; residential revitalization; commercial revitalization, and the creation of a transit inter-modal center that includes train stations, new housing, and commercial development, The result will be a transit-oriented, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use community with enhanced homeownership and ready access to jobs and services.
LSGMI has assisted the 79th Street Corridor Initiative from the start, The main funders have been the MacArthur and Surdna Foundations, The local Empowerment Zone and the county's Community Development Block Grant program made planning grants, Zyscovich, Inc., a nationally recognized "new urbanist" firm, is leading a team of planners and economists who are preparing a redevelopment plan that will reconfigure the passenger stations and free up land for multifamily housing and commercial development.
Conclusion
LSGMI's community building strategy complements its other advocacy, Increasing the supply of affordable dwelling units helps its clients who are facing a housing problems, Helping CDC to create "supportive housing" helps it clients who have special needs (such as HIV/AIDS or homelessness), Revitalization strategies for entire neighborhoods creates jobs and raises overall property values to make is easier for clients to qualify for home repair and other types of loans, LSGMI has played an important role in the creation of hundreds of new affordable housing units and has allowed community development corporations to work more effectively, LSGMI's support for the South Florida Community Development Coalition has helped to bridge the ethnic and racial divisions that characterize Miami by allowing people of very different backgrounds who live in very different communities to work together towards a common goal.
