History.

The MLK Station neighborhood is located approximately four miles northwest of Downtown Miami in unincorporated Miami-Dade County and is bounded by NW 71St Street on the north, NW 54th Street on the south, NW 22nd Ave on the east, and NW 32nd Ave on the west. The neighborhood is centered on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Station of the Miami Metrorail system, a 25-mile elevated rail system that provides access throughout the urban core seven days a week. The target neighborhood boundaries are approximately one-half mile radius from the Metrorail station. MLK Station overlaps and intersects with several other neighborhoods such as Brownsville, Liberty City and Model City.

The MLK Station neighborhood consists of predominantly Black (approximately 70% compared with 18% Countywide) and Hispanic working-class communities which have been combatting crime, low-performing schools and lack of opportunity for decades, but now find themselves at the forefront of what was described by former HUD Secretary Fudge as the epicenter of the housing crisis in the United States. While median household income in MLK Station is approximately $30,000 (compared with $50,000 in Miami-Dade County), the median rent in the neighborhood is $1,950 per month and the median for-sale home value is $371,000. In other words, a completely unaffordable housing market for existing residents.

The target public housing site, which consists of 70 units constructed in 1966 in a series of two-story garden-style buildings spread over three separate sites. These 70 units are a portion of a larger 210-unit development named Annie Coleman 16, which is a scattered site development primarily located outside of the eastern boundary of the target neighborhood. In 2019, residents were offered the opportunity to voluntarily relocate from Annie Coleman 16 through the use of public housing transfers and the issuance of Housing Choice Vouchers due to an on-going and pervasive gun violence epidemic in and around the target site as well as the physical condition of the units.