Carrfour Supportive Housing

Carrfour Supportive Housing (Carrfour)

Founded	1993
Type	Supportive Housing Organization
Tax ID no.	65-0387766
Location	Miami, Florida United States
Area served	Miami-Dade County, Florida
Employees	100+
Mission	"Carrfour’s mission is to confront homelessness by developing affordable housing and providing supportive services as a pathway to self-sufficiency. We are guided by a vision where everyone has safe and decent housing and is self-reliant."
Website	http://carrfour.org

Carrfour Supportive Housing is a nonprofit organization established in 1993 by the Homeless Committee of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. It develops, operates and manages affordable and supportive housing communities for low-income individuals and families in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Carrfour communities combine affordable housing with comprehensive, on-site supportive services. By 2012, the company had become Florida's largest not-for-profit supportive housing provider, housing more than 10,000 formerly homeless men, women and children, assembling over $200 million of financing, tax credits and subsidies, and developing more than 1,700 affordable housing units since its founding.

History

In the early 1990s, as the homeless population of Miami-Dade county grew to more than 8,000 people, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce formed a Homeless Committee to find a permanent solution to homelessness. These efforts led the Chamber to establish Carrfour Supportive Housing as a nonprofit entity "whose mission was to provide both permanent housing and supportive services to help the formerly homeless successfully reintegrate into society by helping them achieve their full potential."

National recognition

In February 2009, TIME Magazine featured Carrfour in a national science story: The following year, in April 2010, former President Bill Clinton hosted a Clinton Global Initiative day of service at Verde Gardens, which includes a 22-acre organic farm. The community was built on the site of the former Homestead Airforce Base.

A September 2012 national wire story featured the Carrfour community as a new model for tackling homelessness.

Also in September 2012, The Huffington Post featured Verde Gardens in a story that highlighted Miami-Dade County's success reducing homelessness by well over 50%.

In May 2013, Carrfour's Verde Gardens community won the National Development Council's 2013 Academy Award for Housing Development.

Numerous other articles have highlighted Carrfour's impacted reducing homelessness.

Subprime mortgage crisis

When the subprime mortgage crisis hit, Carrfour, like other developers dependent on tax credits to finance construction, faced some of the most difficult challenges in its history

"Doug Mayer, VP for housing development at the nonprofit Carrfour Supportive Housing, said its Dr. Barbara Carey-Shuler Manor rental project was delayed by a year because it could not secure the low income tax credits that it had qualified for. This form of financing comes from profitable companies – usually financial firms – that give cash to affordable housing projects in exchange for writing off taxes. The low-income tax credit market evaporated when the financial crisis hit last fall. 'Hundreds of projects across the country stalled because they couldn’t find a market for the tax credits,' Mayer said."

File:Parkview Ribbon Cutting, 10-30-12.jpg

Ribbon cutting for new Miami affordable housing community. Carrfour President/CEO Stephanie Berman-Eisenberg, second from right, with Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, second from left, and Miami-Dade County County Commissioner Audrey Edmonson, center.

Funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 enabled Carrfour to successfully navigate the financial crisis and experience the most rapid growth in the organization's history.

"The city of Miami has partnered with local nonprofits to renovate 26, one-bedroom apartments in Overtown. The project will be funded with $2.5 million in federal neighborhood stabilization dollars ... The nonprofit consortium includes the Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida, Carrfour Supportive Housing, the Little Haiti Housing Association, Opa Locka Community Development Corp., and the Urban League of Greater Miami."

File:John-Laswick-Harvard-House-Grand-Opening-Florida.jpg

John Laswick, NSP Team Leader for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, speaks at grand opening of Carrfour's Harvard House in North Miami Beach, Florida. The Harvard House community was redeveloped using NSP stimulus monies provided to a consortium of local nonprofit agencies.

"As demand for affordable housing and construction jobs rises, Carrfour Supportive Housing is putting federal stimulus dollars to work by purchasing a distressed apartment complex in North Miami Beach with plans to renovate and deliver 56 low-cost units in 2012 ... All told, Miami-based Carrfour was granted $17 million of the $89 million that has been directed to Miami-Dade County through the NSP2 program."

"Southern Miami-Dade County will feature a new apartment complex by Carrfour Supportive Housing in December. The company will open a mid-rise, six-story, 80-apartment building at the corner of Southwest 260th St. and South Dixie Highway in Naranja. The apartment, called Casa Matias, will provide housing for homeless families and low-income families."

"A distressed 1950s multifamily building is getting demolished so the site on which it sits can serve as an affordable housing complex. The $20 million development of Hampton Village Apartments will offer four-stories of multifamily housing units and services to help people better their lives. HUD’s NSP2 initiative, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, has granted nearly $2 billion to states, local governments, nonprofits and public and or private nonprofit entities on a competitive basis, with the purpose of rehabilitating distressed properties. Carrfour Supportive Housing was part of a consortium of Miami-Dade County development firms that were granted $89 million in funding through the program.

Operation Sacred Trust

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Formerly homeless Vietnam veteran with truck where he lived for 18 months.

In 2011, Carrfour launched Operation Sacred Trust to specifically help prevent and end homelessness for Veteran families in South Florida.

"If Gwendolyn Cutler-Isom had to describe her one-bedroom apartment in one word it would be GREAT. 'I love everything about this place!' she said. Since April, the 54-year old Army veteran has been living in the recently-opened Barbara Carey-Shuler Manor in Liberty City."

"Glenn Merryman, 58, had been homeless for nearly a year-and-a-half before moving into his apartment at the Manor in February. 'I felt like I was the lowest person in the world when I was homeless,' he recalled. 'But here they care about you and even check on you every few weeks just to make sure that you’re alright.'”

"As part of an innovative effort to tackle Miami's problem with homelessness, Xavier Wright has traded the streets of downtown for a live-in community farm project in south Florida that grows produce for an upscale restaurant. Wright, 25, said it's his first steady job in two years ... Wright, who previously served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq, had resided in a homeless shelter with his 6-year-old autistic son before moving to Verde Gardens."

A November 11, 2012 Huffington Post article featured Operation Sacred Trust as a new model for ending homelessness for America's veterans. The same day, Carrfour President/CEO Stephanie Berman-Eisenberg published an Op-Ed on the Miami Herald Editorial Page highlighting the program's impact on area veterans.

Carrfour communities

• Amistad
• Bonita Cove
• Casa Matias
• Del Prado Gardens
• Dr. Barbara Carey-Shuler Manor
• Hampton Village
• Harding Village
• Harvard House
• Little Haiti Gateway
• Little River Bend
• Parkview Gardens
• Rivermont House
• Tequesta Knoll
• The Royalton
• Verde Gardens
• Villa Aurora

Communities in Progress

• Liberty Village

External links

• PBS, "Home at Last?", NOW series program, first aired on February 2, 2007. The topic was what will most help homeless people reenter the fabric of society.
• Carrfour Supportive Housing at DMOZ
• Homelessness, Current information on U.S. homelessness written by The Rev. Chuck Currie, former National Coalition for the Homeless board member.
• “Amistad Apartments“ YouTube link to Amistad Apartments community.
• “Grand Opening of Amistad Apartments“ YouTube link to Miami Mayor Tomás Pedro Regalado speaking at Amistad grand opening.
• “Low Income Families Move Into Little Havana Apartments“ Link to NBC 6 Miami news report.
• “Bonita Cove Apartments“ YouTube link to Bonita Cove apartments community.
• “Hampton Village“ YouTube link to Hampton Village apartments community.
• “Harvard House“ YouTube link to Harvard House apartments community.
• “Little Haiti Gateway Apartments“ YouTube link to Little Haiti Gateway community.
• “Verde Gardens“ YouTube link to Verde Gardens community.

• [1] - Carrfour Official Website.
• [2] - Miami-Dade County Homeless Census