Civic group behind redistricting lawsuit promotes affordability, cultural identity as development pressures intensify in the West Grove.
A federal judge’s approval last week of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit challenging the City of Miami’s commission district voting maps brought an end to a three-year legal saga that attracted national attention and cost the city millions of dollars in legal fees.
But for members of the West Grove-based civic group Grove Rights and Community Equity the fight is hardly over.
The group – more commonly known by its acronym, GRACE — served as the lead plaintiff in a case that accused city officials of gerrymandering the five commission districts to assure election outcomes based on race. The judge agreed.
GRACE dates its origins to 2019 when members of the Coconut Grove Ministerial Alliance and Community Development Task Force gathered at the nearby Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church to address strategies to address skyrocketing housing costs and the slow erosion of the area’s historic Bahamian culture. Indeed, in the decade between 2010 and 2020 the neighborhood’s black population declined roughly 26 percent.
“Our board members were overwhelmed dealing one-on-one with the residents of the West Grove,” said Deacon Christopher Hudson from St. Matthews Community Church and secretary of GRACE. “This organization was spearheaded to combat the issues of gentrification and re-zoning that were affecting our community.”
Some members encouraged the alliance to hold the City of Miami and other government agencies accountable for polices that contributed to the steady displacing of black residents, including through legal action, if necessary.
That opportunity arose in 2022 when the City of Miami introduced new commission voting maps that divided some portions of the predominately black West Grove into separate districts. Partnering with the ACLU and other groups and individual plaintiffs, GRACE challenged the maps, alleging that the racial gerrymandering violated federal law by diminishing voter influence and representation at City Hall.
“Legal recourse is not our first choice, [but] the only option left was to take legal action,” said Carolyn Donaldson, vice chair of GRACE and a member of Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church. “The agreement secures a fair map for the rest of this decade and proposes lasting reforms to the city’s redistricting process.”
In 2023, U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and blocked the city’s proposed map. In May, City of Miami commissioners voted 4-1 to pay $1.5 million in legal fees incurred by the plaintiffs, adopt a new voting map, and submit a charter amendment to voters in 2025 to prevent future gerrymandering.
With the lawsuit behind them, GRACE is turning its attention to its four-pronged core mission: advocating for equitable economic development, protecting vulnerable black tenants and homeowners at risk of eviction and displacement, restoring the rights of the wrongfully displaced, and preserving the community, culture and history of West Grove and its people.
Linda Williams, 70, was born and raised in the West Grove. She worries that rising property values and overdevelopment are chipping away the West Grove’s cultural identity as a predominately black community. “Families from different nationalities have been pushed out by gentrification,” said Williams, the former vice chair of the Coconut Grove Village Council and an active member of GRACE. “This is very real and prominent.”
As an example, GRACE president Reynold Martin cites mass evictions that followed the sale and redevelopment of the South Wind Apartment complex in 2016. “Maybe 30 families [were displaced] on Hibiscus Street,” Martin told the Spotlight. “Now you can see it happening on the economic corridor of Grand Avenue within the residential area.”
But with development throughout the West Grove arriving fast, Martin, whose West Grove Bahamian roots date back to the 1890s, is hopeful developers will also be part of the solution. Through negotiated “community benefits agreements” new housing projects can include a certain number of units below market rates. “We have been successful in negotiating arrangements,” Martin says.
One such example, noted Clarice Cooper, treasurer for GRACE and president of the Coconut Grove Homeowners and Tenants Association (HOATA), is Platform 3750 on the corner of Douglas Road and US 1, where the developer was allowed increased density in exchange for setting aside 79 below-market rental units – some as low as $978 per month.
Williams, who finds hope in the people working on this issue, said, “We have to keep fighting.” She added, “I have to keep working to give the people I am advocating for answers.”
Gentrification is the displacement of those with less money by those with more.
I’ll say again, to stabilize and preserve a neighborhood that is undergoing rapid gentrification, ownership by those with less money needs to be supported. Set-aside rental apartments “up in the air” will not slow the gentrification tide by much, although high rise rental apartments are definitely the cheapest way to provide shelter for those who have no other place to live. The City must choose whether it wants to support the historic neighborhood now known as Little Bahamas by supporting ownership (whether condo, or single family homes, or Ancillary Dwelling units, or tax relief, etc,) TOGETHER with the inevitable high -rise rental developments–OR– does the City want to put up an historic marker in a decade or saying: “Here once stood the oldest African-American community in Miami founded and built largely by Bahamian immigrants at the turn of the last century and before…” It’s a choice.