Summary of Services

Housing and Community Resilience

The Housing and Community Resilience Department directs the City's sustainability, resilience, human services, housing, and code enforcement functions. These functions are crucial to ensuring the integrity of neighborhoods, increasing homeownership, and furthering quality of life across the City. The department accomplishes this through a variety of federal, state, and local resources and in collaboration with community partners.

Housing

• Using strategic policymaking toward land use and programming that leveraged the City’s investment of $9 million into more than $116 million in federal, state, and local dollars to add over 1,100 new affordable multifamily housing units since 2020.
• Implementing programs like home repair and rehabilitation, permanent relocation, and homelessness prevention that kept over 800 residents in their homes over the past year.
• Providing pathways that increased homeownership to over 260 homeowners during the past year with homebuyer counseling, down payment assistance, new construction loans and grants and incentives to developers, and partnerships with the Community Land Trust and Habitat for Humanity.
• Working with allocations from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the State’s Florida Housing Finance Corporation, the City developed its 5-year Consolidated Plan to identify the overall housing and community development needs to be met with funds from the Community Development Block Grant Program, HOME Investments Partnership Program, Emergency Solutions Grant, and the State Housing Initiatives Partnership Program.

Human Services

• Co-coordinating the Tallahassee Emergency Assessment Mobile Unit (TEAM) with the Tallahassee Police Department (TPD). Through this program, licensed mental health professionals and police officers respond to nonviolent 9-1-1 calls for individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. A paramedic is available on call for necessary situations. This program is comprised of three units and operates 18 hours a day to serve the community.
• Contracting with over 60 local human and social service agencies to provide direct services for children and families, at-risk youth, after-school programs, homelessness prevention, food programs, medical care for low-income and homeless populations, essential living services, and senior services programs.
• Tallahassee Engaged in Meaningful Productivity for Opportunity (TEMPO) is connecting youth to essential services, enabling vocational education opportunities, and connecting youth to workforce training through short-term apprenticeships with local organizations.

• • TEMPO currently serves more than 3,900 participants, 477 of whom have obtained a GED certificate; 500-plus of whom have enrolled in a technical college or higher education; and 300-plusof whom are now gainfully employed.

• Through the City Commission’s approval of $290,000 for the Tallahassee Future Leadership Academy (TFLA) program, the department augmented the City’s award-winning inclusionary summer youth employment program that has engaged nearly 1,100 participants to date.
• Collaborating with TPD and PRNA on the Neighborhood Public Safety Initiative (NPSI) and Neighborhood First Program to increase active community participation that fosters safer neighborhoods.
• Greater Bond, Griffin Heights, Frenchtown, Providence, and South City neighborhoods are currently in various stages of their planning and implementation processes.
• Partnering with TPD and nonprofits in the community, such as Boys Town and Capital City Youth Services, to address gun violence. Additionally, the City has invested in wrap-around public safety initiatives including TEMPO, TFLA, TEAM, neighborhood safety programs, gun violence mitigation, the Real Time Crime Center, and the Council on the Status of Men and Boys.

Sustainability, Resilience, and Code Enforcement

• Reducing the impact of natural and man-made threats by investing in sustainable and resilient design and construction. As part of this effort, the team implemented seven construction projects in FY25. The projects helped bolster the Jack McLean Community Center, the Lincoln Neighborhood Center, the Walker-Ford Community Center, the LeVerne Payne Community Center, and the C.K. Steele Plaza by leveraging over $1.6M in federal, state, and local dollars into these City facilities that directly support the community.

• Addressing disproportionate economic hardships by advancing food security, the team continues to support six neighborhood-led Community Gardens located on City-owned land. Through local partnership, the team also supports the City Farm training garden located on City-owned property on the Southside that provides hands-on training to growers and fresh fruits and vegetables for the community.

• Fostering stronger neighborhoods by partnering with other City departments and overseeing the funding of the new Griffin Heights Park, which includes a new sidewalk, benches, fencing, and signage, as well as a new bus stop. This effort is part of the Vacant to Vibrant program, which takes vacant, underutilized parcels and transforms them into vibrant, neighborhood amenities.

• The department identified various environmental risks and public‐safety vulnerabilities, conducting 3,901 inspections of private properties across the City. Through collaboration with property owners, the department achieved an 87% voluntary compliance rate for correcting identified code violations in FY25. 
  
  

FY26

• In FY26, the Housing Department will continue to deliver excellent services at its current staffing level.

Click here for the Housing Services website.

Click here for the Human Services website.

Click here for the Community Resilience Plan webpage.

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