lespwa collaborative

Partnering for the transformation of Miami’s Little Haiti Community

Little Haiti is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the migration movement that gave birth to a community that houses Florida’s fifth largest concentration of Haitian residents. Little Haiti is also where 70% of the City of Miami’s Haitian residents resides.

As an unprecedented humanitarian crisis unfolds in Haiti, local and national leaders are collaborating to redress the twin crises of sky-rocketing housing costs and climate change gentrification unfolding in Little Haiti, a 1.6 square mile community of 9,800 diverse residents.

SFCLT is working on multiple fronts to help create a transformative vision for Little Haiti – one that stems the tide of gentrification, while centering the needs of community residents, and achieving housing innovations that help more families experience the security of HOME.

Last year, the Miami Foundation supported SFCLT’s efforts in Little Haiti, from designing the first CLT project in Miami and first CLT condominium in Florida, to developing critical relationships within the community to mitigate climate gentrification. This case study summarizes the work now underway in Little Haiti by SFCLT and its partners.

SFCLT & Lespwa

The word Lespwa means “Hope Alive” in Haitian Creole. It was adopted as the name of a collaboration of place-based development organizations whose leaders are aligning and combining efforts to transform Little Haiti’s housing and business landscapes.

SFCLT is among a team of four Lespwa partners working to design an equitable housing development plan for Little Haiti. The partner organizations have a combined 90 years of experience in community real estate and human capital development. Core partners include the Haitian American Community Development Corporation, Sant La Haitian Neighbor-hood Center, Partners for Self-Employment (a CDFI), and SFCLT.

The partnership was initially funded by a planning grant from JP Morgan Chase. Lespwa is also supported by a team of subject matter experts that includes Urban Market Analytics, a specialist in placebased solutions for economic equity, and Gensler, a global architecture, design, and planning firm.

The community remains one of the largest concentrations of Haitians in Florida and the United States. Yet like hometown Haiti, Little Haiti has undergone waves of outmigration and a steady erosion of cultural and social assets that created a vibrant sense of community.

The exodus is partly driven by gentrification and related market conditions that are pricing out residents with lower incomes (both buyers and renters).

With the recent demarcation of boundaries for Little Haiti by the City of Miami, in 2016, the area shrank by roughly 40% to 1.6 square miles.

The latest data show that people of African descent comprise three-quarters (75%) of Little Haiti residents, making the area one of Miami’s largest centers of Black life. Haitians are 42% of Little Haiti’s population, while other people of African descent are 33% and Hispanics are 27%.

Housing

The housing market in all of Miami-Dade County is undergoing rapid change. No less in Miami and Little Haiti, where the average rent rose by over one-fifth in the immediate wake of COVID-19 (rising from $1,636 to $1,986).*

A Changing Landscape People

Little Haiti was once known as the cultural heart of the Haitian diaspora in the United States. By the early 2000s, Little Haiti had the nation’s densest concentrations of Haitian residents.

Prior to the pandemic, Little Haiti already had one of Florida’s lowest homeownership rates (see next page). Recent market changes further dimmed the prospects for homebuying.

Single family home production in Little Haiti is at a standstill, while a wave of new high-end multi-family units enters the area, and new multi-family ownership strategies are gaining traction.

The influx of new neighbors is driving dramatic changes in income levels in Little Haiti. From 2010 to 2019, the number of households with incomes of $75,000-plus grew by 138%.

Affordable Housing & Homeownership Out of Reach For Too Many Little Haiti Residents

Little Haiti has one of the lowest homeownership rates in all of Florida. Low ownership rates plague the rest of MiamiDade County as well; Miami-Dade ranks last among Florida’s 67 counties for having the lowest homeownership rate (51%).

But the situation is even more acute in Little Haiti where the homeownership rate is just 21%. In the four Little Haiti census tracts with the largest Haitian populations, the rate is only 13%.

Rental costs prevent many from saving to buy a home.

Nearly two-thirds of Miami-Dade renters (64%) are cost-burdened, i.e., pay 30% or more of their income to cover rent. The burden rate is even more extreme in Little Haiti where more than two-thirds (67%) of renters are cost burdened. Note that Little Haiti also has the second highest rate of renters who are severely cost burdened, i.e., pay 35% or more of income for rent).

Affordable Inventory is extremely limited in the Miami-Dade market.

Renters who aspire to one day purchase a home face historically prohibitive market conditions. In addition to competition from cash buyers, single family home prices climbed quickly post-pandemic. According to a Miami Realtors rep-ort for September 2021, 99% of sale inventory was listed at $250K or more, and 96% was listed above the maximum price for buyers using the Miami-Dade Economic Advisory Trust Homeownership Assistance Program ($271K). ■