Novel alliance will bring affordable housing and public schools to prime Miami neighborhoods

Ken Free, HUD Southeast Acting Deputy Regional Administrator, and Michael Liu, Miami-Dade County Public Housing and Community Development Director, celebrate the unique partnership between housing and education leaders to bring affordable housing to the county's urban core.

Groundbreaking ceremony of Schoolhouse Apartments and Southside Preparatory Academy, on December 10, 2021, in Miami's Brickell neighborhood.

Rendering) The new development will include a PreK-8 school and housing units dedicated to teachers. HUD Southeast Acting Deputy Regional Administrator, Ken Free (second from right to left) and Miami Field Office Director, Luis Rolle (at right) joined the ceremony.

By virtue of an innovative partnership between local public housing and public-school leaders, and the private sector, Miamians will soon enjoy a brand-new public school, complete with housing for teachers in a prime neighborhood.

The project is the brainchild of Miami-Dade County Public Housing and Community Development Director Michael Liu and (former) Public Schools Board Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. The two agencies found a unique formula to tackle their mutual need for both workforce housing and new schools in the county's urban core. Then invited a developer, Related Urban, to make it happen.

The project will be completed in the Brickell area, in an empty lot highly coveted by developers. It was formerly public housing, already demolished, so HUD had something to say regarding its future use and the agencies worked with HUD's Special Applications Center (SAC) to obtain approval.

According to the plan, this project is contingent on further collaboration, where Miami-Dade Public Housing and Community Development will participate in building a school, office space, and 200+ units at another site that is owned by the School Board in the Overtown/Wynwood neighborhood. Therefore, the whole project includes two separate parcels of land that together will generate more than 210 units of workforce housing and two brand new schools.

The Brickell property will include Schoolhouse Apartments, ten housing units dedicated to teachers, and the new Southside Preparatory Academy, a PreK-8 school for almost 700 students. The Overtown/Wynwood property will include the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, and a mixed income development with more than 300 apartments, 200 of which will be for affordable and workforce housing.

Ken Free, HUD Southeast Acting Deputy Regional Administrator, joined the groundbreaking ceremony at the Brickell property on December 10th and praised Miami-Dade and private sector leaders for thinking creatively and being successful in assembling available parcels for affordable developments.

"The acute need for affordable housing, especially in Florida, requires this all-hands-on deck approach, with jurisdictions cooperating through intergovernmental agreements, land swaps or a public land bank," said Free. "Stronger collaboration between these systems would enable communities to coordinate resources to help our most vulnerable, older adults, people with disabilities and people experiencing homelessness achieve housing stability, live with dignity and independence in the community."

Free also highlighted the recent expansion of a partnership (https://acl.gov/sites/default/files/ada/HHS-HUD_HousingFactSheetpdf.pdf) between HUD and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (https://hhs.gov/) to improve access to affordable, accessible housing and the critical services that make community living possible.

At HUD, the approach to seek innovative solutions also includes a Climate Action Plan, released in November, to help communities build sustainable housing infrastructure.

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