Special Committee on Critical Quality of Life Issues
Special Committee on Critical Quality of Life Issues
Award of Excellence
2023 APA Florida Project Awards - Best Practices
About this project
The City of Jacksonville’s Special Committee on Critical Quality of Life Issues entailed a four-month process with three working groups meeting each five times as well as the Special Committee’s three meetings. Further, the process involved 672 meeting attendees with 27 presentations relative to the three topics, each addressed by a working group: Homelessness, Healthcare and Affordable (Obtainable) Housing. Further, the overall process resulted in 16 primary recommendations for the three topics.
The significance of the process was twofold: (1) the substantial public involvement, and (2) the unique consolidated consideration of all three topics. The former case involved the statistics cited above and interviews with stakeholders personally affected by the issues seen through chronic homelessness (and the system that helps address it), mental and physical health impetuses and impacts, and the ability to find housing that a family can afford or remain in an existing home given rent increases in part based on investor housing. This latter issue involving the consolidated consideration of all three topics entailed private sector equity firms acting as landlord taking advantage of the market (increasing rates) between leases and/or violating leases given tenants are in many cases financially unable to legally address. This latter case is addressed below under “Originality and Innovation.”
This means the process addressed best practices to provide consideration for options in Duval-Jacksonville, given the approximately 3,000 homeless individuals. Further, the Homeless Working Group initially educated working group attendees to understand the comprehensive nature of the immediate and temporary sheltering and differentiate from long-term/permanent housing. In contrast, the Affordable Housing Working Group addressed a conceptual framework of “causes and consequences” including political/economic, market, regulatory, private sector, and public/non-profit sector factors including zoning, subsidized housing, and supply & demand. Finally, the Healthcare Working Group defined access and provided the barriers including lack of health insurance, poor transportation, labor/limited resources, and the expected post-COVID forced reduction in Medicaid membership.
The significance to planning includes the comprehensive nature of the process with an assessment of the current state in a geographically large city coupled with the involvement of providers from places outside Jacksonville. In fact, one cited lesson in Atlanta was based on a resident’s comment that the affordable housing development could only be a benefit with public transit accessibility. Further, the Miami-Dade pointed out the need for State support relative to legislation to addressing homelessness in a Dillon Rule State like Florida. Moreover, as cited in Jacksonville, “housing is healthcare,” meaning the realization of healthcare cost savings with the provision of housing was addressed by the Access to Healthcare Working Group. This factor was ultimately overlapped by the Affordable Housing Working Group with the involvement of a developer that focuses on smaller units entailing on-street parking (versus a dedicated driveway/garage) resulting in lower impacts fees and traffic calming which has been cited by the Federal Highway Administration.