Miami’s old Omni district seems to have everything needed for a concerted attack on the city’s housing affordability crisis —acres and acres of vacant land just north of downtown, and a public agency that gets millions in tax revenue to combat poverty and blight. But for years, the much-criticized Omni Community Redevelopment Agency failed to spend a cent on housing.
Now, amid a gradual turnaround, the Omni CRA has been working on novel ways to spur the creation of affordable housing that its leaders say could produce thousands of low-cost apartments in a few years. Among those is a new rule that requires developers to include units in new residential projects in the neighborhood for low or middle-income people.
The CRA’s latest idea: Teaming up with a private developer on a plan to build 252 affordable and workforce high-rise apartments, with a financing twist that officials say could speed up production of so-called income-restricted housing in the area.
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