1. Fair Housing Equity
Assessment
Outreach Strategy and Recommendations
James Carras, Carras Community Investment, Inc.
Principal
June 11, 2014

2. Seven 50 - Sustainable Communities
Regional Planning Grant Fair Housing
and Equity Assessment (FHEA)
• Understand the historical, current and future context
for opportunity (i.e. economic prosperity) in the region
and the data and evidence that demonstrates those
dynamics
• Engage regional leaders and stakeholders on findings
and implications of analysis
• Integrate knowledge developed through the Regional
FHEA and inform/integrate into the Regional Plan
(e.g., priority setting and decision making)
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3. Measuring Opportunity and
Equity
OPPORTUNITY
DEMOGRAPHIC
Race /
Ethnicity
Linguistic
Isolation
ECONOMIC
Household
Income
Poverty
Unemployment
Nutritional
Assistance
EDUCATION
Educational
Attainment
Public
Schools
NEIGHBORHOOD
Housing
Occupancy
Household
Composition
Housing
Affordability
Gap
Housing
Cost
Burdon
Affordable
Housing
Access to a
Supermarket
MOBILITY
Commuting
Pattern
Access to
a Vehicle
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4. Key Findings
• Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach have 90% of region’s
residents and vast majority of low- and very-low opportunity
communities
• Racial divide between Whites and African-Africans and Hispanics re:
poverty – over 850,000 live in poverty - 12% of the region
• Racial/ethnic living concentrations – Whites – higher opportunity
communities; Minorities – lower opportunity communities
• Housing costs are high leading to large gaps in affordability and cost-
burdened households
• Strongest areas along the coast and suburban western fringes
• Weakest areas in Miami-Dade County, central Broward and west
Palm Beach County
• Significant portions of Region are considered “moderate opportunity”Carras Community Investment, Inc. 4

5. Minority and Poverty
Concentrations
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6. Cost-burdened Households
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7. Race and Cost-burdened
Households
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A disproportionate number of
renters are minorities
Renters are more-cost
burdened than
homeowners
Thus, a
disproportionate
number of minorities
are cost-burdened

8. Opportunity – Northern Three
Counties
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9. Opportunity – Palm Beach
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10. Opportunity – Broward County
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11. Opportunity – Miami-Dade
County
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12. FHEA Outreach Strategy
• Outreach to regional and local partners
• Numerous regional and local meetings (over 25 and
1,500 participants)
• Opportunity in the Region full day session May 2013
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13. Outreach Strategy
• Project outreach continued with contacts to 31
CDBG Entitlement communities to discuss their
Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing reports.
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14. Outreach Strategy
• Engaged Seven50 Executive Committee and working
committees to be a sounding board for the report.
• Worked with other regional partners to conduct
outreach meetings and discussions including regional
partners
• The South Florida Community Development Coalition
• The Broward Alliance for Neighborhood Development
• The South Florida Regional Planning Council
• Regional Transportation Working Group
• Florida Funders Network
• HOPE, Inc.
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15. Outreach Strategy
• The FHEA process has been fortunate to receive
feedback from other SCI grantees and Policy Link
throughout the FHEA process including Policy Link’s
national meetings in Detroit and Baltimore as well as
their Equity Profile for the region.
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16. Creating the Regional Opportunity
Network
• FHEA serves as the foundation for implementation
of recommendations by the Regional Opportunity
Network
• FHEA will provide the initial benchmark for a
periodic update to understanding progress on the
indicators identified as well as new indicators that
will be identified by the Network
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17. Strategies and
Recommendations• Approaches and strategies that public sector as well
as private sector and community interests should
undertake to solve the challenges presented by
segregation and disinvestment.
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18. Strategies and
Recommendations
• Analysis indicates that the region is making slow
progress -multifamily, rental, and affordable housing
concentrated primarily in older, more urban
communities.
• Seven50 envisions that “more housing and workplace
choices are made available in response to emerging
trends.”
• These choices include affordable housing that is
accessible to quality jobs and supportive services such
as education, training, healthcare, healthy foods and
transportation.
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19. Strategies and
Recommendations• African Americans and Hispanics remain largely
segregated particularly in Miami-Dade County,
Broward County and pockets of Palm Beach County.
• Region needs to create strategies and policies that
welcome residents of all races and incomes to reside
in communities with high quality schools, transit, jobs,
and supporting assets that create a quality of life for
all.
• These assets must also be improved in low
opportunity and disinvested communities.
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20. Strategies and
Recommendations• An initial step should be for local governments
(counties and municipalities) to use the findings of this
report to reexamine their own impediments to fair
housing choice.
• In the long run, it will be beneficial for counties and the
region including private and alternative sector entities
to focus planning, policy tools, and public and private
resources on the specific areas identified on maps in
previous chapters of this report as areas of
opportunity.
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21. Strategies and
Recommendations
The FHEA provides three major recommendations that
focuses on long-term, sustainable approaches and
strategies to achieve fair and just inclusion in a more
equitable South Florida region:
– Fair Housing Equity
– Greater Access to Opportunity
– Affordable Housing
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22. Fair Housing Equity
• Increase public, private, community staff capacity to
better integrate issues of equity and opportunity into
their policies, programs, and plans.
• Agencies should utilize data collection methods and
adapt training resources to support integration of fair
housing into planning and funding decisions.
• Strengthen fair housing assessment and enforcement
(e.g. HOPE, Inc.).
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23. Fair Housing Equity
• Vigorous, region-wide enforcement of fair housing and
civil rights obligations, including not only the rooting
out of discrimination, but also the duty to further the
purposes of Title VIII.
• Adopt regional fair housing goals and monitor
outcomes through the coordination of entitlement
jurisdictions (i.e. Community Development Block
Grant recipients) and housing and equity stakeholders
in creating a HUD-recognized Regional Analysis of
Impediments to Fair Housing that leads to regional
goals and outcomes and monitors success.
• Promote diversity and prevent discrimination by
supporting and expanding fair housing educational
efforts.
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24. Greater Access to Opportunity
• Create sustainable connections that link people and
places in ways that achieve equity. Public, private and
alternative organizations must create structural
connections between people and places that advance
equity.
• Utilize this FHEA’s opportunity mapping analysis to
prioritize housing, infrastructure and community
development investments.
• Make investments in people and places from a
regional perspective, and in a balanced manner that
promotes opportunity and reverses conditions of
disparity in both distressed locations and in
communities that are exclusionary.
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25. Greater Access to Opportunity
• Encourage affordable housing development and
preservation in areas with high access to opportunity
by establishing regional goals and targeting pubic and
private resources.
• Increased transit-oriented development through the
creation of opportunity corridors that include mixed-
income housing by amending and promoting these
uses in local and county comprehensive and land use
plans.
• Improve public transportation with sufficient
investments to provide for the mobility of transit
dependent populations, particularly between areas of
low and high access to opportunity.
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26. Greater Access to Opportunity
• Strengthen leadership from low opportunity
communities particularly low-income and minority
residents to participate in regional economic
development and fair housing planning and
implementation.
• Encourage county and regional economic
development organizations and authorities to increase
participation of low opportunity community
representatives and leaders particularly those who are
low-income and minority.
• Encourage cross collaboration of all economic
development organizations to promote programs in
areas of low opportunity through the use of tax
incentives and other tools to encourage development.
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27. Greater Access to Opportunity
• Promote and implement regional economic
development goals of providing access to living wage
employment for all residents, especially those residing
in low-opportunity communities and low-income and
minority households.
• Advocate and urge regulated financial institutions in
the region to affirmatively lend and invest in low
opportunity communities and in assets in higher
opportunity communities that serve low opportunity
and low-income and minority persons.
• Maintain county-wide school systems across the
region so quality schools are accessible to all.
Increase funding for arts education, early childhood
education and lifelong learning for adults.
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28. Affordable Housing
• Monitor land use and zoning regulations that may result
in the exclusion of the full range of affordable housing
including homeownership and rental projects as well as
group homes for special needs populations and
homeless shelters.
• Manage foreclosed homes to best serve areas of low and
high access to opportunity respectively through the
creation of a system with lenders and non-profit
affordable housing developers.
• Greatly expand initiatives to provide opportunities of
affordable and decent housing throughout the region to
meet the region’s growing housing needs by creating
more housing choices through rehabilitation and new
development. Carras Community Investment, Inc. 28

29. Affordable Housing• Create local and regional housing trust funds through
local documentary stamp taxes similar to Miami-Dade
County
• Create a transit-oriented development property
acquisition fund in conjunction with private investors
(e.g. financial institutions) and charitable resources
(e.g. foundations).
• Develop appropriate incentives to encourage the
development and preservation of affordable housing
such as zoning bonus programs, impact fee waivers,
school fee exemptions, expedited permitting, and tax
abatement programs to encourage affordable housing
development and preservation.
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30. Thank You
For further information, contact:
James Carras |954.415.2022 |
carras@bellsouth.net