Resilience Policy Toolkit

Emerging research on development solutions to climate risk informs a fluid, iterative approach to addressing adaptation needs. Due to the frequency and severity of these risks in Miami-Dade, the County finds itself at the forefront of this innovation.

Changing climate conditions are associated with increasing threats to Miami-Dade County and these threats are expected to grow in intensity over the coming decades. This challenge is compounded by a severe shortage of affordable housing that threatens the stability and resilience of many middle to low income households. The issues of climate change and housing stability each pose challenges to human well-being on their own and are amplified when they occur in unison. Therefore, strengthening the resilient capabilities within under-resourced, vulnerable communities is a key step in preparing for these challenges. Recent research published by the National Institute of Building Sciences calculates that an investment of $1 in adaptation projects can result in up to $11 of avoided disaster costs (Multi Hazard Mitigation Council, 2019). Based off the pay me now, or pay me later theory it saves to invest in climate adaptation projects. 

The University of Miami’s Office of Civic and Community Engagement (CCE) is launching the Resilience Policy Toolkit as a climate-focused companion to its Miami Housing Policy Toolkit, outlining creative strategies and policies to equitably address the resilient future of Miami's multi-family affordable housing stock. In this toolkit we investigate climate-related policies and programs that have been successfully implemented in other U.S. cities as a guide for implementation within Miami-Dade County. We intend for this toolkit to initiate and contribute to current conversations on effective strategies to protect and strengthen Miami's most vulnerable communities. Leveraging strategies such as those proposed in the toolkit can extend a building’s useable life while democratizing access to safe, protected, and affordable housing for all residents.

Miami-Dade County has one of the highest levels of housing cost burden in the country for renters due in large part to a tight supply of affordable housing and an economy comprised overwhelmingly of lower-paying service jobs. Recent initiatives by local government and non-profit organizations such as Miami Homes for All have outlined thoughtful strategies to increase the affordable housing stock for more equitable living options. As these plans are implemented and materialize into new units, Miami can benefit from a coordinated, County-wide effort to encourage the incorporation of climate-related adaptation measures in development plans for multi-family housing developments.

The City of Miami's Department of Housing and Community Development includes a checklist encouraging certain resilience considerations into Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for new affordable housing developments. In addition, Miami-Dade County has made significant strides toward encouraging environmentally sustainable buildings. For example, the Green Building Expedited Plan Review incentivizes certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for new developments by reducing the cost and time of permitting for these projects. In addition, the BE305 Program aims to track and reduce energy and water consumption for large private and public buildings in Miami-Dade County. 

These programs provide strong foundations from which to build additional measures that can enhance the resilience of affordable housing in Miami-Dade County. The use of a standardized and actionable resilience checklist tailored toward encouraging meaningful strategies to reduce climate threats in Miami-Dade County can help foster resilience in new and redeveloped affordable housing projects.

Washington, D.C.

The Department of Energy and Environment in Washington, D.C. worked with Enterprise Community Partners to develop a climate resilience checklist for multi-family affordable housing projects throughout the city. The framework for this checklist provides actionable information on adaptation strategies by identifying unique vulnerabilities for each building, while maintaining an overall goal of community resilience. The technique of using a flexible checklist that accommodates the unique hazards faced by each building can increase the efficient implementation of a resilience checklist.  

Denver, CO

Increasing temperatures throughout the country are forcing communities to adopt innovative solutions to account for extreme heat risks. The City of Denver is integrating plans to quell urban heat impacts while addressing historical patterns of racial segregation by devising a program to increase tree coverage in lower-income neighborhoods that have historically been victims of under-investment. The City has implemented an environmental tax by increasing the sales tax to fund these greening initiatives. Considering such guidelines in a resilience checklist for affordable housing development could help Miami-Dade County accomplish similar heat reduction goals in its own communities.

Norfolk, VA

Recent adoption of zoning ordinances (2018) creates new zoning overlays to incentivize active risk reduction for flooding and other climate threats. Included in this ordinance is a resilience quotient representing a threshold of points allocated to development projects based on their plans to meet the standards set for flood risk reduction, stormwater management, energy resilience, and water conservation. The incorporation of new zone overlays allows for varying levels of resilience quotients based on the level of vulnerability for a given geographic area. Properties not using the resilient quotient are required to obtain LEED Gold distinction or incorporate four of seven approved resilience techniques. These techniques include installing landscape areas in previously impervious areas, increasing tree canopy cover, and limiting enclosed areas below the floodplain to a certain square footage. Norfolk’s approach presents a flexible framework that can achieve community resilience for a vast range of projects. 

As evidenced by “best practice” examples, the creation of a resilience checklist should be sensitive to local climate hazards that impact neighborhoods differently within the County. In addition to sea level rise and flooding, the climate risk research firm  Four Twenty Seven  highlights Miami-Dade County’s vulnerability to heat and hurricane risks. The risks from hurricanes and severe heat vary throughout Miami-Dade, with coastal locations more at risk from hurricanes and low-income areas more at risk of high heat (MDC, 2016). A policy that includes a development checklist providing a base level of resilience to both of these hazards, but is flexible enough to incentivize further resilience measures based on localized needs, is the best strategy for the County. The following local solutions are selected based on their ability to incorporate a resilient checklist into the current priorities.

Require Resilience Checklists for Affordable Housing RFPs:

• A 2017 Request for Proposals (RFP) for a city-owned property that was issued by the City of Miami required applicants to incorporate energy efficient and green elements in their affordable housing development plans. These components represented 5% of the total points for each proposal grade. To further strengthen this policy, encouraging tiered scoring of RFPs for public affordable housing projects could give preference to developments that offer additional resilient elements while also increasing the relative weight of these green building attributes in proposal scoring. 
• Introducing a more robust green component checklist with elements identified as directly increasing multi-family building resilience ensures that publicly-owned developments address climate change. Certain items that reduce the urban heat-island effect (through roofing and planting) and facilitate drainage via water-permeable walkways or parking areas are proven resilience tools that should be incorporated. 

Development Incentives for Resilience Checklists

• To reduce the potential increase to development costs that may arise from the suggested additions, Miami-Dade County should incorporate cost-saving incentives for developers that include resilience measures as provided by the County’s resilience checklists. In the County’s Consolidated Plan for 2020-2024 the County plans to relieve some of the constraints on affordable housing development through reduced fees and flexible zoning accommodations. It is important that these cost reducing initiatives further incentivize sustainable building practices that account for climate risks, so that these projects do not face increased risks in subsequent years. Creating a resilience checklist that is linked reduced development constraints can adequately address this concern.  
• Supportive funding for multi-family units can be tied to the incorporation of climate resilient design similar to the way the Florida Housing Finance Corporation incentivizes affordable housing development throughout the state.
• Reporting out on program successes can encourage developer participation and guide creation of similar programs in other local entitlement jurisdictions.
• Reimagine compelling development bonus programs like  Miami 21's Public Benefits Program  to encourage potent solutions to sensitive development.

Through the  C40 Cities Compact of Mayors , Miami-Dade County has committed to reductions in community-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The County is focusing on the two main GHG contributors, buildings and transportation. The County’s recent  BE305 Program  aims to reduce GHG emissions and increase resource efficiency of water and energy in large public and private buildings. With buildings accounting for nearly 40% of the County’s energy use and climate pollution, this investment is a thoughtful and important commitment to increasing awareness about energy use and reducing operating costs for property owners.  

Once the initial framework has been launched and data reviewed, the County should expand its purview to encourage affordable housing developments to participate in energy and water management plans. With heat stress and clean water availability as two of the major climate-induced risks faced by Miami-Dade County, promoting efficient usage of these resources is an important way to reduce impacts and improve living and working conditions for building tenants. The stress on resources impacts all residents but is particularly felt by low-income households. Literature on energy usage estimates that low-income households spend on average three times the amount of their income on energy costs compared to non-low-income households (Drehbol, Ross, Ayala; 2020). The savings generated from increasing building efficiency would reduce the utilities burden for low-income households, reduce barriers to entry, and contribute to the long-term sustainability of these multi-family units. 

Boston

The non-profit  American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy  ranks the city of Boston at the top of its US list of energy efficient cities. According to its 2019 Climate Action Plan, Boston has pledged to reduce emissions from municipal operations to 60% of 2005 levels by 2030. A key to achieving this goal is benchmarking progress along the way. Boston provides the necessary transparency to achieve this goal by using a portfolio manager tool, Analyze Boston, to benchmark and report on energy usage for 100% of their municipal buildings. The energy use data is made available via  Analyze Boston . Boston’s commitment to benchmarking energy usage is supported in the energy usage literature. Cox, Brown, and Sun (2013) found that a nation-wide benchmarking program would lead to significant reductions in energy costs and consumption. 

In 2014 Boston completed a $66.7 million dollar energy-efficient renovation of 13 public housing properties owned by the Boston Housing Authority. Alongside the energy efficient upgrades to these buildings, Boston included a first-of-its-kind public housing project labor agreement. This agreement provided residents of Boston's public housing with a career-trade training program focused on efficient building construction through the Building Pathways Program. The collaboration between residents of these newly renovated buildings and the city not only contributed to increased energy efficiency but also provided new skills training to a vulnerable workforce.  This program provides an excellent framework for Miami-Dade County to incorporate into their affordable housing building planning and construction strategy. 

Recertification Program

Miami-Dade County currently requires building inspection and  recertification for buildings  over 40 years old to ensure general structural and system safety. This recertification process provides an opportunity to incorporate energy efficient upgrades for older, lower performing buildings. The inclusion of a benchmarking requirement in this recertification to track the utility usage of these older buildings. could provide a more targeted approach when updating these structures to desired utility standards. 

Building Efficiency Policies

Miami-Dade County's  BE305 Program  introduces a benchmarking system for private and public buildings larger than 20,000 square feet. The goal of this initiative is to maintain data on energy and water usage within these buildings as a way of tracking gains in efficiency. This program presents a promising opportunity that can be expanded to affordable housing regardless of structure size. While there are significant up-front costs for increasing utility efficiency in these buildings, the long-term accrual of savings over time will benefit residents and owners. Initial costs can be offset through reduced development fees or other subsidies.

A key initiative of the County’s 2020-2024 Consolidated Master Plan calls for the continued support of jobs training programs in Miami-Dade County. Boston’s incorporation of a jobs training program into the utility benchmarking of their multi-family buildings  is an appropriate outline to follow. Miami-Dade County should align their climate adaptation efforts with their housing and community development programs by coordinating initiatives that advance both goals. Incorporating a jobs training program that teaches lower-income workers how to audit and retrofit multi-family homes for utility efficiency will create more sustainable buildings and a work force that can adapt to changing labor demands. 

Additionally, creating a sustainability fee similar to the one implemented in Miami Beach as part of its  Green Building Ordinance  would be beneficial for Miami-Dade County. The City of Miami Beach requires developers to pay into a sustainability fund for new buildings larger than 7,000 square feet. Developers are refunded their fees if their building achieves an approved green building standard certification. If the building does not comply with green building standards, the sustainability fee revenue is applied to public improvements that enhance the City’s sustainability. Implementing a similar mechanism for the development of multi-family buildings throughout Miami-Dade County could provide the additional incentives for developers to construct sustainable, efficient buildings or contribute to larger community resilience goals.

Utility Benchmarking

The benefits of benchmarking utility usage extend beyond the identification of poorly performing structures. In particular, benchmarking can lead to increased capacity for purchases of energy efficient equipment that deliver lower utility bills, less pollution, and reduced waste. The  BE305 Program  provides an excellent starting point to incorporate utility benchmarking throughout Miami-Dade County. The push to incorporate benchmarking standards throughout the County also creates an opportunity for training to build and expand a skilled workforce.  

As climate risk varies by location, adaptation strategies need to be modified based on the extent and type of risk they are designed to protect against. An important consideration to include when creating these adaptation strategies is the type of physical structure that is being upgraded. This building typology-focused approach allows for a proper assessment of the costs and benefits relating to building improvements, enabling owners and managers of these structures to consider a balanced set of strategies that can best protect their assets. The cost-benefit analysis is not a prescriptive tool for a specific building, but rather offers a high-level catalog of options and cost considerations that can be used to aid decision-making about adapting multi-family affordable housing to climate risk.

To outline the value of such an exercise, we undertook an analysis of the most typical affordable building typologies in seven neighborhoods throughout Miami. Understanding the nuances of neighborhood character, geography, and demographic conditions was an important first step in our initial baseline assessment. A comprehensive analysis of climate risk and the costs and benefits of hazard resiliency interventions followed with suggestions specific to the prevailing building typologies at the neighborhood level. 

Four primary categories of the most common multi-family affordable housing buildings were identified in this analysis: duplex, garden-style apartment buildings, mid-rise apartment buildings, and high-rise apartment buildings. By combining flood-risk data with the distribution of building typologies for the seven neighborhoods of study within Miami-Dade County, we were able to establish location-appropriate case-study models to help guide an analysis of potential building interventions. This information can help guide building owners and managers with assessing their own risk profile and offer a basis for estimating cost effectiveness and feasibility. 

This locally-sensitive approach assesses a number of factors that arise when adapting affordable housing to sea level rise. The analysis explores not only the costs and losses avoided by physical building adaptation recommendations that leverage characteristics specific to each building typology but also quantifies impacts of displacement and relocation costs, mental stress and anxiety, and lost work productivity resulting from hurricanes and other extreme weather events. A more comprehensive description of the cost-benefit analysis that explored a range of adaptation strategies is available  at this link .

An important component of incorporating the renovation plans described in our cost-benefit analysis relies on finding available funding for these projects. Due to credit constraints of individuals living in affordable housing and concerns of increased rents imposed by building owners resulting from improvement costs, alternative options for financing these resilience measures need to be considered. In Miami-Dade County’s 2020-2024 Consolidated Plan, the County outlines an actionable plan to foster and maintain affordable housing in Miami. One of the ways the County is looking to accomplish this goal is through the financing and funding of Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH) renovation projects. The County should encourage these renovation projects to include climate focused improvements. The renovation of these NOAH properties provides a favorable opportunity to build the resilience of lower cost housing to the changing climate. 

Rising sea levels and increasing storm intensity create unique risks for homes in coastal communities. While a number of creative adaptation and mitigation solutions have been implemented or suggested throughout Miami-Dade County, there is growing discussion that managed retreat from flood-prone areas will need to be part of our resilience plan as climate risk increases. Limitations on available resources requires communities to consider certain trade-offs with their climate resilience funding. That is why, when discussing managed retreat, we suggest exploring an equitable buyout strategy that promotes community resilience and quality of life improvements in the high risk, low-income neighborhoods. Home buyouts are one of many tools used to combat catastrophic climate events and must be used judiciously. Equity plays a critical role in all adaptation planning; buyouts must be considered and deployed with great care to ensure that they are not used as a tool to displace lower income households within the community.

North Miami

• Following the "No Name” storm of 2000, the city of North Miami purchased a home on Northeast 144th Street that had flooded three times prior to the buyout. The city approached the resident  with a cash offer to purchase the house, and nearly a decade later followed through with plans to renovate the land. With the newly reclaimed land, the city initiated a design competition through the Van Alen Institute. The winning design team incorporated input from the local community to produce  Good Neighbor Stormwater Park . This park serves the dual purposes of supplying a much-needed public open space and providing local flood protection to increase excess flood capacity in the area. This particular buyout in North Miami is part of a larger adaptation initiative in the Arch Creek Basin, demonstrating that buyouts are one of the possible mechanisms municipalities can use to increase the adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities. This buyout in particular serves as a great example of a vibrant engagement and design process that led to further resilience initiatives for the surrounding neighborhood. 

Houston, TX

The city of Houston has incorporated an equity-focused approach to address flooding risks. Following the devastation from Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Harris County changed its focus on resilience to veer away from protecting only the highest valued locations. Instead, the County incorporated a social vulnerability index into the decision process for resilient infrastructure, attempting to alleviate the unequal vulnerabilities to climate risks. Houston’s integration of social vulnerability measures into adaptation decisions represents a pro-active and robust decision-making process that could be studied and replicated in Miami-Dade County.

Richmond, VA

A recent signatory to the  10-Minute Walk Movement , the city of Richmond has set a goal that all homes in its jurisdiction are within a 10-minute walk of a park. In order to achieve this goal, they are repurposing city-owned vacant lots into public green spaces. Dozens of other cities, including the city of Miami, Miami Gardens, and Miami Lakes, have also made this commitment.

Miami-Dade County can take a similar approach when considering buyouts, as this strategy could align with the Miami-Dade County Department of Parks and Recreation  Master Plan  to have parks within a 10-minute walk. Buyouts can strategically be carried out in locations at high risk of flooding, where the resulting land can be turned into green space that reduces the risk of flooding for surrounding properties and provides outdoor amenities for lower-income neighborhoods. The Land Access for Neighborhood Development (LAND) tool created by CCE identifies vacant lots owned by municipalities, faith-based organizations, and large institutions, providing an important resource to begin discussions about potential aggregations for public purposes. 

Charlotte, NC

The  City of Charlotte  has built a robust and effective neighborhood-level buyout program to ensure consistent program delivery that does not rely solely on federal grants or post-disaster aid. Conducting buyouts at the neighborhood level with the predictability of local budgeted allocations avoids the potential community disruption that can come from buying out individual properties piecemeal, and allows communities to benefit from quick buys. These properties, restored to serve as  a community asset as well as a functioning floodplain, are reforested or used for wetlands restoration and retention, in addition to being turned into parks, community gardens, and greenway trails. This program is funded locally by an impervious area-based fee where homeowners are taxed proportionally to the amount of flooding contributed by their property, known as a stormwater fee. 

Hurricane Irma Voluntary Home Buyout Program

Following destruction from Hurricane Irma in 2017, the state of Florida created the " Rebuild Florida Voluntary Home Buyout Program " to reduce the risk of residential flooding from future hurricanes. The goals of this program include a focus on acquiring housing from low to moderate income households, which will play an important role in reducing vulnerability of at-risk communities. Due to the scarcity of funding for such programs, however, we suggest focusing on the resulting impact for the broader community with these housing buyouts. Specifically, the County should make sure these buyouts do not encourage further development in these at-risk areas. The Post Disaster Redevelopment Plan for Miami-Dade County presents this approach in its own plan. Importantly, Miami-Dade has already received funds to purchase a number of properties that are currently in the approval stages of the buyout.

Turning this suggestion into public policy would embed floodplain considerations for future development plans as a matter of course. Building upon precedent from other communities facing climate risk, a judge in  Virginia Beach, VA recently ruled that the Virginia Beach City Council has the right to factor in the risk from sea level rise when making decisions about approval for future developments.

Community engagement is an important component in proactively addressing and responding to the threats posed by climate change. Particularly in high risk areas such as Miami-Dade County, incorporating community input and cooperation can help produce robust and equitable solutions to the impending climate challenges. Recent research from the Global Network of Civil Society Organizations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR) finds that a lack of inclusion from the most at-risk communities is one of the main contributing factors leading to community vulnerability (GNDR, 2020). 

In an effort to maximize community engagement, we suggest creating a robust, centralized, and easily accessible climate hub for Miami-Dade County. This resource could serve as “one-stop-shop” supporting an engaged citizenry and could offer a calendar of public municipal meetings, local information events, and a repository of other advocacy and education initiatives that are organized by local climate and equity focused institutions. In a region composed of 34 distinct municipalities, it is essential to create one centralized and comprehensive destination for climate engagement and education to unite residents around shared, common efforts. 

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, CA - San Francisco's Department of the Environment maintains a  calendar  that promotes citywide environmental events. Within the calendar infrastructure there are filters that further specify the type of events that are available, including categories such as climate change, energy, and transportation. This focus on environmental events is a good outline for Miami-Dade County to follow.

Miami-Dade County Calendar

Current efforts by Miami-Dade County provide a  calendar  of some municipal events taking place within the County. We look to build off this framework by creating a climate-specific calendar of events that could be expanded to include non-governmental entities such as local universities, non-profit organizations, and special event programming. We believe this integration can further enhance the relationship between private and public efforts, leading to a more informed and active public learning and leading on climate change.