Innovation and vigilance are key to ending homelessness in Greater Miami | Opinion

Innovation, evolution and cooperation, especially in times of crisis, are critical to meet Miami’s complex challenges.

These acute tests include rapid changes in the economy, education and environment; infrastructure needs; affordable-housing shortages and so much more. And we’re certainly in the midst of an emergency almost two years into the historic COVID-19 pandemic.

Homelessness is a special Miami challenge that relates to all these factors, and Chapman Partnership has taken on this issue with new ideas for almost 30 years. Because of visionaries such as our organization’s founder Alvah H. Chapman Jr., the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, our strong board leadership and scores of generous community partners, we no longer see sprawling tent cities or multitudes of desperate people on our downtown sidewalks.

But we must stay vigilant, quick and creative as threats to the community’s well-being mix and mutate like a dangerous variant of COVID-19.

Chapman’s latest initiative to fight homelessness is its Social Enterprise Academy (SEA), designed to provide transformational learning and occupational training — a path to independent living for youth and adults. While providing a warm bed and a hot meal is important, we’ve learned we must think bigger and bolder to truly solve homelessness.

The innovative SEA program to foster self-sufficiency and comprehensive life skills comprises five pillars — Empower You, Early Childhood Education, Young Adult Career Academy, Workforce Trades Program and Entrepreneurship.

The workforce trades component features hands-on learning and certification in skilled jobs, such as carpentry and electrical, to serve construction and other high-demand industries.

We’re especially excited to launch a comprehensive renovation transforming our existing warehouse into SEA’s state-of-the-art, two-story 6,500-square-foot educational center including classrooms, meeting and exhibition space, technology labs and offices.

This all was accomplished during the pandemic, which presented an unprecedented set of logistical, health, safety and economic challenges to serve our clients and community.

This has been a success, but shifting challenges will never rest. Our community’s other deep issues — economic disparity; low wages; and the high cost of living, especially for housing — put thousands of families just one missed paycheck away from Chapman Partnership’s doors. The end of eviction moratoriums, pandemic relief checks and other economic fallout from COVID-19 will endure and increase these pressures on Miami’s working residents.

Our mission to serve these adults and children is vital, providing enormous benefits — humanistic and economic — to this community. Through helping transition hundreds of residents back into the workforce and staffing approximately 160 in our operating facilities, Chapman Partnership’s annual economic impact to Miami-Dade County is $350 million, according to a study by The Washington Economics Group. Our organization has long been considered a national model and “beacon of strategy” for other cities to emulate in the fight against homelessness.

We’re proud to contribute to the wide range of positive and creative transformations taking place, including the city establishing itself as a tech center; countless bold startups making South Florida a hub of entrepreneurship and business diversity; universities leading the way in research on sea-level rise; and now Chapman Partnership rewriting pathways to self-sufficiency.

Chapman Partnership was born of a deep economic crisis three decades ago. It delivered then and, more important, has continued to succeed in addressing needs of the day, but also the changing tests of the future. As a not-for-profit, we’ve only been able to succeed with an equally visionary and attentive support network that we deeply appreciate and are proud to call partners.

Today is an exciting era of evolution and solution in Miami, even as we emerge from the historic COVID-19 crisis. This type of creativity, cooperation and persistent drive — together with our board, philanthropic community and the Miami Dade County Homeless Trust — is precisely what we need to overcome our future challenges, including Chapman’s particular mission that no one must sleep on our streets.

Symeria T. Hudson is president and CEO of Chapman Partnership, the private-sector partner of Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust.