Joined Development Partners bought a Section 8 multifamily complex in Miami’s Liberty City, where the previous owner faced slumlord allegations last year.
An affiliate of the Clifton, New Jersey-based real estate firm, which specializes in affordable housing, paid $21.9 million for Lincoln Fields Apartments, a 32-building community at 2050 Northwest 64th Street, 2051 Northwest 66th Street, 2030 Northwest 68th Street, and 6221 Northwest 21st Avenue, records and Vizzda show.
Joined Development obtained two loans totaling $25.6 million from Merchants Bank of Indiana to fund the purchase.
The deal breaks down to $102,760 per unit for the 214-unit complex, which accepts tenants that receive Section 8 vouchers, a rental assistance program through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. The property is subject to land use restrictions that 20 percent of the units must be occupied by “very low income” tenants and 40 percent must be occupied by “low income” tenants.
Liberty City is one of Miami’s poorest neighborhoods.
The seller, an affiliate of Tampa-based Southport Financial Services, paid $10.7 million for the 8-acre affordable housing project in 2011, records show. The two-story buildings were completed between 1945 and 1953.
Last year, dozens of residents and the non-profit community activist group Miami Workers Center held a protest at Lincoln Fields to bring attention to the squalid conditions of the apartments, according to the Miami Herald and other publications. Tenants allowed reporters and news photographers to document black mold growing on walls and ceilings, holes made by rats and other signs of alleged landlord neglect.
In 2021, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio requested that HUD officials take “immediate action” to ensure safe and sanitary living conditions at seven Florida affordable housing communities managed by Cambridge Property Management, the company hired by Southport to oversee Lincoln Fields. In a letter to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, Rubio noted Lincoln Fields received a failing grade from its Real Estate Assessment Center inspection.
Lincoln Fields is near Liberty Square, Miami’s oldest public housing complex that is being redeveloped into a mixed-income community by Coconut Grove-base Related Group’s affordable housing division. As part of a public-private partnership with Miami-Dade County, Related Urban is tearing down the 753-unit apartment community that was home to roughly 600 low income residents.
The new development’s first phase, six three-story buildings with 204 apartments, is currently under construction. When completed, the new Liberty Square will have more than 1,500 apartments, a 40,000-square-foot supermarket, 15,000 square feet of retail and community and health centers. Some units will be set aside for very low-income residents with special needs, low-income seniors, as well as workforce housing.