FALL 2025 Ransom Everglades LOG 39 Annie Lord ’97 (fourth from right) and her colleagues at Miami Homes for All Annie Lord ’97 and Phil Lord ’93 a quarter mile away from me and had a totally different life than me.” Recalling the origin of her curiosity, she noted, “It was all visually demarked, the separation of race and class, like all the trees suddenly were gone when you crossed a certain street into the West Grove. I thought to myself, what if I had been born a quarter mile north? Or what if my mom had decided to stay in Havana? It just seems like a matter of chance and zip code. I thought, at first, it was all terribly unjust and then I thought, surely this must be solvable.” She went on to become the first executive director of South Florida Community Development Coalition, then chief program officer for City Square, then vice president of community development for Citibank until she assumed the helm of Miami Homes For All (MHFA, formerly Miami Coalition for the Homeless) in 2018 as its executive director. MHFA’s mission is to ensure that everyone in Miami-Dade County has a safe, affordable place to call home. To achieve its mission, MHFA works to change the whole housing ecosystem to increase both affordable housing supply and low-income households’ access to it. Among some recent wins, MHFA partnered with the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust in 2023 and successfully applied for $8.4 million in HUD funds to address youth homelessness. In 2024, MHFA recruited landlords to set aside 526 units for youth and families exiting homelessness and placed 134 families in permanent housing. To support new housing production, MHFA committed $1.2 million and comprehensive technical assistance to 10 Black real estate developers and property owners in support of 15 small, multifamily affordable housing projects in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. To encourage more funding for affordable deals, MHFA published a report showing that 14,000 deeply affordable units could be built today in Miami-Dade, but for $1.5 billion in funding. While that number may give some sticker-shock, it is actually a number frequently raised in local bond issues across the country. Her work could not be timelier because MiamiDade County has one of the largest affordable housing emergencies in the nation. According to MHFA, the county has a shortfall of over 90,000 affordable housing units. The shortfall rose in tandem with the ascent of Miami housing prices, with median single-family home prices surging 14% to $650,000, while median condo prices escalated by 11% to $445,000. Annie Lord is unquestionably working at the center of the front-line for real systemic change of the entire housing ecosystem. “I’m trying to think through what are the solutions that change this for everybody,” she said, “not just 10 people or 100 people.” Despite her impact, Lord remains unsatisfied. “My vision for Miami is that we become a place where everybody can pass each other on the street on their way home, and all those people are different,” she said. “A domestic worker, an attorney, a single mom, a college student, an older person all living near each other and near awesome stuff like jobs, schools, parks and concert venues. Miami is the culture of many people from many different places, but a lot of the people who helped make Miami unique on a global scale are being displaced. If we lose those people, then is Miami really as unique as it was? Are we as special as we were? And are we as economically competitive as we’ve been?” Annie Lord epitomizes the innovative problem solver committed to the advancement of human welfare – it is a soulemanating mission that lies at the very heart of her professional and personal endeavors. Ransom Everglades School is honored to include Annie Lord ’97 among our greatest, most impactful alumni. – Victoria Beatty ’00 An education consultant to Ransom Everglades, Beatty is also an assistant professor of law at Barry University and Chief Executive Officer of Miami Youth Garden, Inc., a nonprofit organization that partners with faith leaders to offer summer and after-school leadership academies taught in tandem with the cultivation of community gardens for youth residing in high-poverty Miami neighborhoods. “I’ve spent my career trying to think through what are the solutions that change this for everybody, not just 10 people or 100 people, but everybody.” – Annie Lord ’97 Annie Lord ’97 and RE Chief Operating Officer David Clark ’86
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