Amid South Florida’s ongoing affordable-housing crisis, developers and top Miami-Dade officials on Monday broke ground on the redevelopment of an aging, public housing complex in Homestead.
The redevelopment project is the first of three phases of an affordable housing community in South Miami-Dade being called Homestead Gardens.
The project will have more than 160 units, with at least half set aside for low-income and Section 8-eligible residents.
The project is being developed through “Rental Assistance Demonstration,” a federal program through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program’s mission is to preserve and improve public housing properties.
Construction in Homestead is expected to be finished by 2026.
Affordable housing — rental and homeownership — remains a major public policy challenge in Miami-Dade and throughout South Florida.
A 2022 study by the FIU Metropolitan Center found 62% of Miami-Dade renters are cost burdened — meaning they spend more than half their income on rent — and that “eviction filing rates have now exceeded pre-pandemic numbers.”
Another study published in January by the national real estate firm Redfin listed Miami as the second most unaffordable Metro area for renters, ahead of New York, Los Angeles and Boston. Only Providence, Rhode Island, ranked higher than Miami.
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This is a News In Brief report.
