Starting Strong: Homestead, Florida’s Resilience Journey Is Just Getting Started
When the City of Homestead was designated a Community Disaster Resilience Zone (CDRZ), they did not even know it. That changed the moment Alicia Betancourt picked up the phone.
Alicia Betancourt, a Navigator for Climate Ready America and hosted by the University of Florida IFAS Extension, recognized Homestead on the CDRZ list as a community that could benefit from immediate engagement. Community Disaster Resilience Zones, or CDRZs, are part of a federal initiative to prioritize under-resourced communities for climate resilience funding and support. For Homestead, that designation became the starting line for a deeper journey into long-term climate planning.
Alicia, who is a Community Development Agent with the University of Florida and one of the Florida’s Climate Ready America Navigators, reached out even before city staff knew about their designation. “We weren’t aware of it,” said Pamela Springle, Grants and Special Projects Administrator for the City of Homestead. What followed was a flurry of collaboration. Pamela shared that Alicia did more than make introductions. She made things happen. “I told Alicia which resources I was interested in, and then she would reach out to those people and see if they were able to meet our needs.”
Climate Ready America is an initiative of the Geos Institute, designed to help communities build resilience through statewide Climate Innovation Centers and hands-on Navigators. Homestead’s journey is part of the Climate Ready America Southeast Demonstration Project, a pilot program led by Geos Institute and supported by the Walmart Foundation, to show how this model can build local capacity for climate resilience.
Alicia, for her part, recalls the work as part translation, part matchmaking. “Sometimes it is not about just handing over a resource list. It is about understanding what each community is really asking for and finding the right people to walk them through it,” she said.
For Homestead, that included Project IN-CORE, a team that partnered with the city to assess local vulnerabilities. Their work began with a Level 1 flood hazard analysis, a high-level overview of risks, followed by a more detailed Level 2 analysis that uses localized data to provide sharper insights. This process helps cities identify exactly where and how they are vulnerable.
The findings surprised everyone. “Most of the flooding… showed it was along the turnpike, which is really weird because they have stormwater mitigation all along,” Pamela said. The data has not just shifted understanding. It is already informing decisions. Homestead added new information from the report into its GIS system, or Geographic Information System, a digital mapping platform used to visualize data across the city. That is helping guide grant writing, vulnerability studies, and infrastructure planning.
“I did not have any data to support why we needed different funding for different projects,” Pamela said. “So that just helped give the support we needed.” Alicia noted that this kind of data support is only part of the value of being part of a nationwide network like Climate Read America that is designed to deliver coordinated, responsive, and effective climate services. “Yes, we bring technical resources, but we also bring relationships, experience, and the ability to work within each community’s local reality. That is how we make this support actually useful.”
In addition to helping Homestead understand its climate risks, this structure has helped open doors for resilience funding. Alicia introduced Pamela to Alloy Fundraising to explore strategies for grant development. That support included guidance on creating grant-ready projects, including sewer system upgrades, stormwater infrastructure improvements, and the potential expansion of underground power lines beyond the historic district.
Alicia also walked Pamela through the process of navigating the Local Mitigation Strategy (LMS) list, an essential requirement for securing state hazard mitigation funds. She provided a step-by-step overview of how to get projects listed, when to apply, and how to improve a project’s ranking. Today, the two remain in close contact, monitoring emerging funding opportunities.
While Homestead’s journey is still in the early stages, they’re not short on ambition. With aging and undersized infrastructure, a shifting administration, and increasing risks, including new threats like terrorism near high-profile assets such as a nuclear plant and NASCAR track, the city is now looking to build forward, not just fix what’s broken.
Pamela says the biggest difference in working with Climate Ready America has been the quality and focus of the support: “It is more them doing the legwork than yourself. If people are worried this will be like the technical assistance they have received before… it is nowhere near that.” She pointed to the credibility of the partners involved: “Their teams are specialists. You have subject matter experts helping you in whatever field you need.”
So far, those resources have helped Homestead complete vulnerability analyses, integrate flood hazard data into city GIS, begin aligning grant writing with real, data-driven needs, and look ahead to upscaled infrastructure and layered resilience planning. No major projects have broken ground yet, but momentum is building. As Pamela put it, they are “putting two and two together” between reports, local needs, and project prioritization.
In many ways, Homestead represents the exact kind of community Climate Ready America was built to serve. They have passionate people, a willingness to act, and now, thanks to Alicia and the Navigator network, access to the right tools and expertise. For cities like Homestead, resilience is not just about surviving the next storm. It is about investing in what it takes to thrive long after it passes.
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Robert Macnee, Ph.D. is Deputy Director of Resilience Services at Climate Resilience Consulting, where he helps governments, institutions, and communities reduce climate risk in equitable and practical ways. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Management focused on climate change impacts on health and communities, and brings over a decade of experience spanning economic development, resilience planning, and implementation.
Samantha Medlock is President of Climate Risk Advisors, helping communities and organizations advance equity, sustainability, and resilience. Her career began chasing floods as a local official in Texas Flash Flood Alley—a hands-on experience that still shapes her approach to climate and disaster risk management.
Jim is a multilingual world traveler. Based in Bavaria during the 1970s, Jim spent most of this period in India, Afghanistan and Nepal, where he founded and operated a charitable medical clinic serving Tibetan Refugees. He settled in Oregon in 1983 on a forested ranch in the Umpqua National Forest.
Dr. Micah Hahn is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health in the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. She received her joint PhD in Epidemiology / Environment and Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MPH in Global Environmental Health from Emory University. Subsequently, she was a postdoctoral fellow for the CDC Climate and Health Program, and in this position worked collaboratively with the CDC Division of Vector-borne Diseases and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her research focuses on understanding the health impacts of climate change and working with communities to develop locally-relevant adaptation and resilience-building strategies. Dr. Hahn is also on the Management Team of the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center.
Michael is a former Founding Principal of Resilient Cities Catalyst, a global non-profit helping cities and their partners tackle their toughest challenges. He is currently the Executive Director of Climate Resilience Academy at the University of Miami.
Dr. Quintus Jett is a consultant, educator, and strategist for public causes. He has a doctorate in Organizations & Management from Stanford University, and a two-decade faculty career which spans schools, departments, and programs of business, engineering, liberal studies, divinity, and public and nonprofit management. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Dr. Jett launched a volunteer project in New Orleans, which enlisted residents, students from over a dozen colleges and universities, and hundreds of others to field map the city’s Gentilly district, Lower Ninth Ward, and New Orleans East. Dr. Jett is an innovator in higher education, bridging the divide between academic research and the other priorities of the modern university, including student access and diversity, community engagement, and providing foundations for life-long learning in today’s rapidly changing world.
Scott is Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He has written about 100 publications in the peer-reviewed climate literature, is a former editor of the Journal of Climate, and served for five years as founding Science Chair of the North American Carbon Program.
Linda has many years of experience in disaster preparedness and resilience. She has been an elected official on the Linn County Iowa Board of Supervisors, Chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the East Central Iowa Council of Governments, the statewide Mental Health Developmental Disability and the Linn County Board of Health. Langston is a former president of the National Association of Counties (2013-2014).
Ken works with families and organizations as a mediator, organizational consultant, trainer and facilitator. Along with his passion for helping people prepare for and reduce climate change, Ken also volunteers as a mediator through Mediation Works and is passionate about supporting youth through mentoring with Boys to Men of Southern Oregon.
Matthew is a retired high school teacher who was once honored as Oregon High School Social Studies Teacher of the Year. Before his teaching career he was in the restaurant business in Portland. He is also a lawyer who has been a member of the Oregon State Bar Association since 1980.
Andrea is the Resilience Policy Advisor for the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency. She works across state agencies and with local governments to increase the state’s resilience to the impacts of climate change.