The US bank J.P. Morgan Chase announced on Friday a donation of more than 7.45 million dollars for two NGOs focused on affordable housing in Miami-Dade County (Florida), which is currently suffering a crisis of access to this type of housing.
In a ceremony with the county mayor’s office, Abigail Suarez, executive director of Global Philanthropy and head of Neighborhood Development at JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:.JPM)., announced the donation of 4.45 million dollars to the non-profit organization Miami Homes For All.
This NGO promotes community efforts to prevent and end the lack of affordable housing in South Florida, as identified in its social networks.
Suarez said another $3 million will go to the Solar Energy Loan Fund (SELF), a nonprofit community lender with a mission to “ensure everyone has access to affordable financing for crucial home repairs and improvements.”
“We have to commit resources because this problem (affordable housing) has a solution,” Annie Lord of Miami Homes for All said during the announcement.
For her part, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at the funding announcement ceremony that the county is currently preparing 32,000 units of affordable housing to put in the hands of those most in need.
Last April, Levine Cava declared a state of emergency over the housing crisis and announced a package of “urgent solutions” ranging from the use of federal rental funds to the collaboration of the mayors of the county’s 34 cities.
“We have become the most unaffordable place in the country,” the mayor coined during the presentation of the “Building Blocks” program, aimed at tenants who could stay on the street.
According to the councilor, it is a “vertiginous increase” in rents.
The Miami Herald newspaper of South Florida places the severe crisis in housing availability before the 2020 pandemic began.
“Latin American shoppers” with cash and the Jobs and Tax Cuts Act of 2017, in which Miami-Dade experienced an influx of shoppers from across the country, may be some of the causes, the newspaper says.
But it also points to the current expansion of technology and finance companies to Miami and its surroundings, something that accelerates the difference in purchasing power in the population.
