The document outlines recommendations from a regional fair housing equity assessment (FHEA) conducted in South Florida. It provides three major recommendations: 1) promote fair housing equity through improved data collection, staff training, enforcement of fair housing laws, and education; 2) increase access to opportunity for all residents through investments in housing, infrastructure, and community development, particularly in low-opportunity areas; and 3) expand affordable housing options throughout the region through initiatives like housing trust funds, acquisition funding, and development incentives. The FHEA was informed by extensive outreach to regional partners and is intended to serve as a foundation for ongoing coordination and monitoring of fair housing goals.

1. Seven50 FHEA
Outreach Strategy and Recommendations

2. Outreach Strategy
• As part of the development of the South Florida
region FHEA, outreach was conducted by the
Consultant to regional and local partners.
• Input throughout the entire Sustainable Communities
grant process was garnered.
• This input included methodology design and issue
identification as well as gathering of fair housing
history and data.

3. Outreach Strategy
• Through numerous regional and local meetings, the
draft FHAE and Regional Analysis of Impediments
(RAI) reports were reviewed.
• With the support of the regional consortium including
the Seven50 Executive Committee, Task Forces and
the broadly defined fair housing network, the
completed FHEA (a combination of the draft FHEA
and RAI) is a document that provides an analysis of
housing inequalities in the South Florida region, and
most importantly will serve as a catalyst for dialogue
and implementation of methods to address these
inequalities.

4. Outreach Strategy
• The first draft of the FHEA was released January 24,
2013 to over 500 regional and local partners at the
second Seven50 Regional Summit in Miami.
• A break-out working session was held with
approximately 120 participants who reviewed the
findings of the draft FHEA and discussed their
ramifications and strategies to address them.
• Project outreach continued with calls to 31 CDBG
Entitlement communities to discuss their Analysis of
Impediments to Fair Housing reports.

5. Outreach Strategy
• Discussions were also held with HOPE, Inc., South
Florida’s premier fair housing agency.
• In April, 2013, the Consultant presented the initial
findings of the FHEA and RAI to over 200 local fair
housing stakeholders in Broward and Miami-Dade
County at HOPE-sponsored events.
• The participants spent time responding to surveys as
well as small group discussions on the findings and
made recommendations to address them.

6. Outreach Strategy
• As the draft FHEA was finalized, the Consultant
engaged our consortium through its Executive
Committee and working committees to be a sounding
board for the report.
• Simultaneously, the Consultant worked with other
regional partners to conduct outreach meetings and
discussions including regional partners such as:
• The South Florida Community Development Coalition,
• The Broward Alliance for Neighborhood Development,
• The South Florida Regional Planning Council,
• Regional Transportation Working Group,
• And the Florida Funders Network.

7. Outreach Strategy
• Throughout the process, the strategy was to inform
as well as gather input for the FHEA framework.
• While the Seven50 consortium was proficient in
giving policy recommendations for the FHEA, it was
key to get “everyday” proponents of affirmatively
furthering fair housing to give feedback not only in the
form of policy recommendations but also in the form
of implementation strategies that fair housing,
community development and housing agencies and
community-based organizations would like to see.

8. Outreach Strategy
• On May 17, 2013, a day-long “Opportunity in the
Region” session was held in Fort Lauderdale along
with three satellite sites in Miami-Dade County,
Monroe County, and Palm Beach County.
• The session was streamed live on the web.
• Approximately 165 people attended the session
where they reviewed the FHEA and RAI findings,
discussed the key indicators and the spatial location
of low and high opportunity communities and
recommended specific priority approaches to
addressing significant issues.

9. 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.
• The final report will be presented to the launching of
the South Florida Regional Opportunity Network on
June 11, 2014.
• The creation of the Regional Opportunity Network is
one of the principal recommendations of the Seven50
Plan.

10. Outreach Strategy
• The FHEA will serve as the foundation for
implementation of recommendations by the Regional
Opportunity Network and will provide the initial
benchmark for a periodic update to understanding
progress on the indicators identified as well as new
indicators that were not covered in the report.

11. Strategies and Recommendations
• Previous sections of this report have indicated the areas
of low opportunity highlighted by racially-concentrated
areas of poverty.
• The maps and analyses in this report have defined these
areas as well as areas of opportunity, provided evidence
of housing disinvestment, and that regional and local
public policy has only minimally improved the situation.
• This section recommends approaches and strategies that
regional, county, sub-regional, and municipal
governments as well as private sector interests and non-
profit organizations should undertake to solve the
challenges presented by segregation and disinvestment.

12. Strategies and Recommendations
• 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.
• The analysis in previous chapters indicates that the
region is making slow progress in realizing that goal
with multifamily, rental, and affordable housing
concentrated primarily in older, more urban

13. Strategies and Recommendations
• African Americans and Hispanics remain largely
segregated in these parts of the region particularly in
Miami-Dade County, Broward County and pockets of
Palm Beach County.
• To address these conditions, the 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.

14. 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.

15. Strategies and Recommendations
• There is currently no consistent ongoing regional
coordination of fair housing planning or activities in
the South Florida region.
• Also, there is no regional authority to compel the
implementation of regional fair housing programs and
policies.
• The FHEA is the first attempt at regional coordination
on these issues.

16. 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

17. Fair Housing Equity
• Increase the capacity of staff at the municipal, county and
regional levels as well as private, alternative and quasi-
public organizations to better integrate issues of equity and
opportunity into their policies, programs, and plans.
• Agencies must utilize data collection methods and adapt
training resources to support integration of fair housing into
planning and funding decisions.
• Strengthen regional and sub-regional coordination of fair
housing assessment and enforcement particularly by
increasing funding of non-profit fair housing organizations
(e.g. HOPE, Inc.).
• Agencies must allocate resources for coordinated regional
enforcement of fair housing and civil rights laws and to

18. Fair Housing Equity
• There must be 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.

19. 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

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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

23. Affordable Housing
• Monitor land use and zoning regulations of the region’s
municipalities and counties 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

24. 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.

25. Thank You