As another scorching summer sets in, the City of Miami is taking strategic action to protect its most vulnerable residents from the intensifying impacts of climate change.
Through funding from the C40 Cool Cities Network’s Heat, Health, and Equity Challenge Fund, the city is launching a new community-driven research and intervention project for the 2025 Extreme Heat Season.
About the project
Miami is part of a global coalition of cities confronting the climate crisis, known as C40. The city’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability (ORS) recently received a C40 grant to partner with community-based organizations (CBOs) to implement a heat-focused initiative with health and equity at its center.
In collaboration with The Miami Foundation, the initiative will include the installation of indoor and outdoor heat sensors in the homes of about 70 residents to collect survey data on their experiences with extreme heat. The project targets seven climate justice neighborhoods: Overtown, Liberty City, Little Haiti, Allapattah, Little Havana, Flagami and the Little Bahamas.
Each neighborhood will work with a local CBO to recruit participants and help install sensors.
Residents say the heat is only getting worse.
“I keep water on me at all times. If not, you'll get lightheaded because it has happened to me before because of the heat. It's really out of control. I never felt this kind of heat before in the past,” said Batuka Williams, a resident from Liberty City.
Faith Grant, Collective Impact Officer at The Miami Foundation and the project lead, said the effort will fill a key “data gap.”
“We understand how extreme heat affects us on the streets, but what does it look like in homes? How does it affect those who don't have cooling solutions or cooling systems inside and outside their homes?”
Two residents train at the Moore Park, one of the designated cooling centers in the City of Miami.(Amelia Orjuela Da Silva for The Miami Times)
The neighborhoods targeted face overlapping challenges — older housing, low tree canopy, high utility bills and poverty — all of which intensify the dangers of summer heat.
“There are pockets of neighborhoods where the city knows heat is exacerbated,” Grant said. “This project will inform future funding, more equitable cooling, policies and solutions for residents within the city, and provide recommendations.”
The city will create a GIS-based map showing temperature disparities and energy burdens, critical data in a city where over 70% of residents rent and more than 84% stay in the same home year after year. Participants will receive $200 stipends.
In addition, the city has opened 10 park-based cooling centers where people can access water, supplies, and information.
Ground Zero: Overtown
Catalyst Miami is the lead CBO in Overtown, one of the most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods. Camilo Mejia, director of policy and advocacy, and Nicole Crooks, the community engagement manager for Overtown, are spearheading recruitment and community engagement.
Crooks said the project gives communities tools to validate long-held concerns.
“We talk so often about how it feels hotter, but rarely have we had what we need to really measure it and share it,” said Crooks. “I think what this study will do is put a face and numbers on what we’ve been feeling for a long time.”
In 2023, Miami experienced 42 days with a heat index of 105°F or higher, well above the previous average of six days a year. In May 2024, two days hit a record-breaking 112°F. In areas like Overtown, heat is even more intense due to lower tree canopy and dense construction, often registering half a degree Celsius hotter than the city average.
“We know that with a lot of the construction that's happening, with all of the concrete that's going around us, that's one of the biggest contributing factors to the heat,” she said. “We need to build differently. If we're going to be in the midst of all of this development, we need to do so in a sustainable way.”
Mejia noted that while every Miamian feels the heat, not everyone feels it equally.
“If you live in a home that's weatherized and there's street canopy in your neighborhood, you're probably paying less in electricity, and chances are that you probably have a higher income than people who live in homes where there is no tree canopy in the neighborhood.”
He pointed to RAD-based (Rental Assistance Demonstration) mixed-income developments, where subsidized residents often face higher energy costs due to unit issues, but struggle to be heard.
“You can have people living next door to each other, same apartment building,” Mejia said. “But maybe one of them has water damage from leaky windows or doors, and they're paying a lot more on AC. And not only do you have heat, you have humidity.”
Energy burdens and financial strains
Disparities like these are what cause Overtown residents to struggle balancing soaring utility costs with other essential needs.
“When I think of the energy burden, I also think about the fact that families who are already struggling have had to take out predatory payday loans just to pay electric bills,” she said. “A lot of people in our community rely on subsidies to help pay for utilities, and so my hope is that in working through this, we'll be able to see where additional support is needed.”
She said seniors on fixed incomes face impossible choices during the summer, having to choose between food or lights, toilet paper or air conditioning. And despite living in small apartments, many residents are paying more in utilities than families in larger, energy-efficient homes elsewhere.
Anitrice Jackson — better known as “Mama Joy” — founder of the local nonprofit Nana’s Restart, lives with these tradeoffs every day.
“It’s so hot around here that my air conditioner shut off twice,” she said. “We need a new unit, but it’s so costly. Even my dog had to lay on the bathroom floor because the house was that hot.”
Her Florida Power & Light bill now exceeds $330 per month.
“I told them, put me with the FPL CEO and let me ask him: How much is your light bill?” she said. “A lot of parents can’t afford their light bill. So what they do, their light bill gets cut off and they come to our organization to ask for help.”
Extreme heat isn’t just inconvenient — it’s dangerous. According to the CDC, Florida saw more than 26,000 emergency room visits and 5,000 hospitalizations from heat-related illness between 2018 and 2022.
“We're not really looking at the long-term effects of exposure to extreme heat, and here, we're talking about cardiovascular disease,” Mejia said. “Having a sensor in that person's home is going to be able to tell a story of what's going on in that particular home, regardless of what's going on outside.”
Beyond the study
The study is in its early stages, with CBOs currently working to recruit residents. The sensors will be installed by July 4, and data collection will run through October. But for the community groups involved, the work doesn’t stop there.
“We need to ensure that it's a transformational type of project and not transactional, which is something that often happens,” Crooks said. “It's not just going to be another opportunity for us to capture the information, but it's really going to be used in centering community voice, community needs, community desires, and find really meaningful ways to mitigate heat.”
For Grant, the urgency is clear.
“This is just 70 people,” Grant said. “We understand there are hundreds of people dealing with extreme heat in their homes. It's the data, the lived experience, and also the measurements of heat that are gonna help us in future planning.”
This story was produced by The Miami Times, one of the oldest Black-owned newspapers in the country, as part of a content sharing partnership with the WLRN newsroom. Read more at miamitimesonline.com.
