Levine Cava needs Miami-Dade’s Black vote to get reelected. But has she delivered?

At a small gathering in South Miami-Dade, County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava glides through the crowd, shaking hands, giving hugs and taking pictures.

It was the last day of Black History Month and Levine Cava, wearing a purple and yellow kente cloth gown, hosted a meet-and-greet with members of the Black community at the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center. Copies of a report detailing her accomplishments in the Black community lined the table near the entryway, the smell of soul food slowly seeping into the air. The very next day, she would announce her reelection campaign, a move that aims to “continue the work we started and to deliver results,” she said in a video message about her bid.

“My entire life has been about equity,” she told the Miami Herald at the Moss Center. “This is what I think is important: to make sure that we have opportunity across the board.”

When Levine Cava became the first woman to be elected county mayor, her supporters touted her experience — both as social worker and attorney — as evidence of someone willing to challenge the status quo. And, in some respects, she did: Levine Cava launched the county’s first Office of Equity and Inclusion, reestablished the Independent Civilian Panel to bring more accountability to police and set aside millions to address South Florida’s housing crisis, according to her Promises Kept and Progress Made to Black Miami-Dade report.

Levine Cava’s report also touted other achievements: beginning construction on the South Dade Bus Rapid Transit corridor; creation of the Strive305 small business support program; the $5 million award to preserve the historic Carver Theater and creation of the Office of Neighborhood Safety, which aims to collaborate with the community to improve its conditions. And while many will praise these accomplishments, there are some who hoped for more, particularly when it comes to affordable housing and public safety.

“The mindset is the same old that we’ve always seen: It’s relying on the police and police-centered models to fight and solve crimes,” said Lyle Muhammad, Circle of Brotherhood executive director. “And that’s what we’re moving away from because time and time again that has shown that it does nothing but keep a revolving door around crime and violence.”

Black voters were a key part of the Levine Cava coalition that made her Miami-Dade’s first female mayor in 2020 and the first Democrat elected to the office since Alex Penelas won reelection in 2000. In Miami Gardens, the largest primarily Black city in Florida, Levine Cava took more than 80% of the vote against her Republican opponent, Esteban Bovo, now Hialeah’s mayor. Black voters make up about 15% of Miami-Dade’s electorate, and enthusiasm from that voting bloc could be crucial to any Democratic candidate if Republicans can ride the red wave Ron DeSantis brought to the county last fall, becoming the first GOP gubernatorial candidate to win Miami-Dade in 20 years.

Although Muhammad gave Levine Cava credit for setting aside $8 million for violence-prevention work that will be distributed to nonprofits like COB, which provides training for Miami and Miami-Dade police as well as works to address the systemic factors of crime, the idea that police received roughly $1.3 billion of the county budget was concerning. Muhammad said he wanted to receive the same support locally as he has nationally, pointing to the $2 million that COB recently received as part of the White House’s Community-Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative.

“Money and where we put it, it tells us where our heart is,” Muhammad said, adding that the national conversation has skewed away from police-centric responses.

After violent crime increased during the early part of Levine Cava’s tenure, it has fallen in 2023, according to Levin Cava’s report. Additional research showed that the data came solely from Miami-Dade police, who oversee the county’s unincorporated areas. The mayor attributed the drop to grassroots organizations like COB working in concert with police departments.

“I think it’s a both-and strategy,” Levine Cava said, referring to the combined efforts of police and community-based nonprofits. “Obviously we want to prevent crime first and foremost and we have to do that in partnership with community organizations. And we have put a lot more money into those programs as well. But we also did have an uptick in violent crime and the communities, you know, there’s an immediate need right? You’ve got to protect people in their homes so they feel safe.”

Levine Cava also touted plans to roll out a co-response model that would pair a social worker with a police officer. It’s unclear when this plan is expected to debut. Muhammad, however, maintained this approach still prioritizes the law enforcement involvement.

“Not everything is a law enforcement problem but we also want be sure that things don’t escalate,” Levine Cava said, advocating for the co-response. “One of the areas that has gone up in crime is domestic violence. More of the shootings do involve domestic situations. So you might think, ‘This is something that could be handled by cooling off in a counseling session,’ but unfortunately that’s not always the case, and you don’t really know when it’s going to be the case.”

For Jacqui Colyer, who has known the county mayor for more than three decades, it has been Levine Cava’s approach to governing that ultimately stands out. She, too, wants alternative policing options to be explored but praised Levine Cava for diversifying her staff, the mayor’s Peace and Prosperity Plan and investing into the Historic Hampton House, where Colyer serves as board chair. So when Colyer heard about the meet-and-greet in Cutler Bay, she made the hour-and-a-half drive from North Dade to offer support.

“Mayor Levine Cava has a key sense of listening to the community, hearing what they say and finding ways that this county can change and do something differently,” said Colyer.

When it comes to housing affordability, Levine Cava has taken steps to provide some relief. Last April, she declared a housing affordability crisis and set aside $13.4 million in federal funds for the Building Blocks Program, which seeks to help struggling renters pay their rent. Since then, $182 million has been committed to affordable rental and homeownership projects, according to the mayor’s office. Roughly 6,500 rental units have either been completed or are under construction.

Four months later, she proposed an $85 million program that provides “mortgage assistance to homeowners, and funding for local developers and landlords to expand the supply of affordable housing.” Only parts of this initiative, also known as the HOMES Plan, have been implemented, including the $8 million commitment to the Emergency Rental Assistance Program and the $15 million to the Workforce Housing Incentive Program. The $25 million set aside for mortgage assistance has yet to be rolled out.

Housing experts, however, believe much more assistance is needed.

“I don’t expect to see any relief in the near future,” Ned Murray, associate director of Florida International University’s Jorge M. Pérez Metropolitan Center, told the Miami Herald in August. He added that the county has approximately 251,732 cost-burdened renters. “We’ve yet to see the full impacts of the housing-affordability crisis. Expect to see growing economic impacts as workers migrate away from high-cost areas, leaving severe labor shortages across industry sectors, further displacement due to rent increases, an increase in homelessness and an overall loss of quality of life as renters and many cost-burdened owners are left with little or no residual income.”

Again, Muhammad pushed for more to be done in the area of housing affordability.

“To allow the rental abuse that is taking place in South Florida right now, to allow that to happen without a stance and fight is to say that it’s OK and it means that poor people will continue to be poor, houseless people will continue to be houseless and renters will never become buyers,” Muhammad said, adding that “some fights and political battles you have to take on not to win” but because “it’s the right thing to do.”

Levine Cava acknowledged that more work needs to be done. She distanced herself from the possibility of rent control, citing the state’s “barriers that make it virtually impossible,” instead championing housing that will be built on county-owned property and legislation that allowed for accessory dwelling units, or smaller, residential units usually located in backyards, to be built in unincorporated areas. Levine Cava also promised an “innovative” hire for the open director of public housing position.

“We’re not taking our foot off the pedal here,” she said. “We have to continue in, in all of it every possible way that we can.”

Miami Herald reporter Douglas Hanks contributed to this report.