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.
The lab houses two projects, the Health Equity Project and the Housing and Community Economic Development 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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
cooperation with the ACLU of Florida challenging municipal racial gerrymandering under the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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.
education summer program for K-12 students in cooperation with Macedonia Missionary Baptist
Church, the Coconut Grove Ministerial Alliance, and other Village West stakeholders.