Community Equity Lab

CEPS Coconut Grove Village West - March on City Hall

Community Equity Lab

The Community Equity Lab integrates anti-poverty and civil rights advocacy and grassroots organizing strategies with university-wide, interdisciplinary resources to advance social justice initiatives at the neighborhood intersection of race and inequality in the areas of education, health, housing, municipal equity, and the natural and built environment. The Lab houses two projects: the Health Equity Project and the Housing and Community Economic Development Project.

Lab Projects

The lab houses two projects, the Health Equity Project and the Housing and Community Economic Development Project

Health Equity Project

Launched in 2020 in collaboration with the School of Medicine’s MD/MPH Program, the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, and a coalition of community partners, the Health Equity Project engages in community-centered health law and policy research, advocacy, and education (e.g., climate change, maternal health, Medicaid). In 2023-2024, Project faculty, fellows, and interns presented health rights education workshops, conducted research on the public health effects of housing displacement and neighborhood resegregation, and participated in a panel on the Policy Determinants of Black Men’s Health at the Third Annual Black Health Summit sponsored by the Health Foundation of South Florida at Florida Memorial University.

Housing and Community Economic Development Project

Created in 1999 initially as a joint venture with the School of Architecture’s Center for Urban and Community Design to develop interdisciplinary teaching, research, and neighborhood technical assistance models promoting municipal equity in the built environment, the Housing and Community Economic Development Project has grown into a broader collaboration with a coalition of community partners, including Black churches, civic associations, and tenant and homeowner organizations, seeking to (i) halt the eviction, displacement, and resegregation of vulnerable tenants and homeowners; (ii) negotiate community benefits agreements; (iii) reform segregative land use and zoning policies; and (iv) build and rehabilitate fair, affordable, and integrated housing. In 2023-2024, Project fellows and interns engaged in doctrinal and legislative research, fact investigation, and relationship-building with neighborhood groups to document the racially disparate impact and segregative effect of land use, zoning, and demolition policies and practices in the City of Miami, and, in doing so, established the factual and legal foundation for a city-wide fair housing investigation and enforcement action by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Former HCEDP Project:
Racial Justice Grant: Voting Rights in Miami's Historic Coconut Grove Village West

Grant awardees address inequities, promote racial justice 

Rights Education, Research and Law Reform Campaigns

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  • Trolley Garage Campaign

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in support of pro se complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration Office of Civil Rights against the City of Miami, City of Coral Gables, and Miami-Dade County under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to halt the discriminatory siting of a City of Coral Gables bus depot in Village West.

  • Ward v. City of Miami

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in support of state litigation to halt the discriminatory siting of a City of Coral Gables bus depot in Village West.

  • East Gables Trolley Access Campaign

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in support of extension of municipal trolley service to residents of the historically segregated MacFarlane Homestead Subdivision and the Golden Gates District of East Coral Gables.

  • Old Smokey Incinerator Steering Committee

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in support of the investigation and cleanup of
    contaminated parks in the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County, including petitions filed with
    the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
    Registry seeking a public health assessment of the harmful effects of environmental exposure to
    hazardous waste from the former City of Miami Incinerator No. 2 (Old Smokey).

  • Styles v. City of Miami

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in support of state class-action litigation17 against the City of Miami to remediate parks and properties contaminated by Old Smokey Incinerator ash, compensate damaged homeowners and injured residents, and establish a health registry for individual and community medical monitoring.

  • Miller v. City of Fort Myers

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in cooperation with the Environmental Justice
    Clinic and in support of federal class-action litigation against the City of Fort Myers under the
    Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to remove and remediate an arsenic “Sludge Dump” in
    the historically segregated neighborhood of East Dunbar.

  • Day Avenue 8

    Rights education, fact investigation, administrative agency testimony, and research in cooperation
    with the Environmental Justice Clinic and in support of the negotiation of restrictive covenants
    prohibiting commercial uses of property and providing 14 units of affordable, workforce, and low-
    income housing and relocation assistance for tenants residing on eight land parcels located on Day
    Avenue in Village West.

  • Housing and Community Development Task Force

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in support of a fair-and-affordable housing
    coalition of Black churches, civic associations, and tenant and homeowner organizations to combat
    the mass eviction and displacement of low-income tenants and homeowners in Village West.

  • Grove Rights and Community Equity, Inc. (GRACE)

    Facilitated the incorporation of a nonprofit organization in cooperation with Legal Services of
    Greater Miami to advocate for fair housing and equitable community economic development
    through the negotiation of community benefits agreements, land use and zoning policy reform, and
    federal and state litigation.

  • GRACE, Inc. v. City of Miami

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in support of federal voting rights litigation in
    cooperation with the ACLU of Florida challenging municipal racial gerrymandering under the
    Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

  • GRACE, CGVW, HOATA, CGMA, and Nnamdi v. City of Miami

    Rights education, fact investigation, and research in cooperation with the Community Justice
    Project and in support of a civil rights administrative complaint filed with the U.S. Department of
    Housing and Urban Development against the City of Miami challenging discriminatory land use,
    zoning, and demolition policies and practices under the Fair Housing Act.

  • Village West Freedom School

    Curricular development, historical research, and classroom instruction in support of a youth
    education summer program for K-12 students in cooperation with Macedonia Missionary Baptist
    Church, the Coconut Grove Ministerial Alliance, and other Village West stakeholders.

Community Equity Lab Fellows

  • Minah Malik- Catsman Fellow
  • Angela Pope- Catsman Fellow
  • Niara Ellison Williams- Hunton Fellow
  • Kyle Spohn- Hunton Fellow
  • Omarley Spence- Hoeveler Fellow
  • Emma Rice- Hoeveler Fellow
  • Emma Page- Chaykin Fellow
  • Taimaisu Ferrer Sin- Palermo Fellow
  • Valerie Caso-Veras- Palermo Fellow

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